Prepare to completely rethink the way labor markets can and should work in a free society. Walter Block, in this large collection of his writings on the topic, avoids no controversial issue in the course of a consistent application of Austrian labor theory.
He begins with the determination of wages in a market economy and defends the idea that wages adjust to changing economic conditions according to the same economic laws as prices do. He explains why and how wages move up or down in a market. He takes on the issue of fairness in wages.
In turning to unions, he lays out the precise conditions under which unionization is consistent with libertarian theory and concludes that modern unions are not. Further, he explains unions as worker cartels that have the same difficulty surviving in a market as other cartels. The section on the minimum wage is probably the longest here, for Block finds that many economists still support it, which, to his mind, indicates a misunderstanding of basic economic logic.
Other topics discussed in depth are fringe benefits, redistributive justice, the status of tenure in a market economy, as well as business ethics and managerial economics and immigration, a topic on which Block takes the radical "free immigration" perspective.
The book is hardbound and comes in at 381 pages. It contains no index and the articles themselves have not been re-typeset from their original appearance in journals, webpages, and newspapers. This is regrettable but it is still very helpful to have Block's writings on this topic accumulated and organized in this way.
The book is published in 2008 by World Scientific Publishing, which explains the high price. Believe it or not, the Mises Institute is discounting it deeply here from its retail price because it is a valuable book of writings on issue that are hardly ever examined in depth by the mainstream.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
I. Wage Determination
1. Promotion, Turnover and Preemptive Wage Offers
Walter Block and Robert A. Lawson
2. Globalization and the Concept of Subsistence Wages
Walter Block, Jerr Dauterive, and John Levendis
3. Labor Market Disputes: A comment on Albert Rees' "Fairness in Wage Distribution"
Walter Block
4. The Discounted Marginal Value Product-Marginal Value Product
Controversy: A Note
Walter Block
II. Unions
5. Is is Possible to Reconcile Unions with the Libertarian Legal Code?
Walter Block
6. Labor Relations, Unions and Collective Bargaining:
A Political Economics Analysis
Walter Block
7. Labor Union Policies: Gains or Pains?
Jason Evans and Walter Block
8. The Yellow Dog Contract: Bring it Back!
Walter Block
9. An Economic and Ethical Analysis of Unions
Walter Block
10. Comment on Richard B. Freeman's "Labor Markets and
Institutions in Economic Development"
Walter Block
III. The Minimum Wage
11. A Primer on Jobs and the Jobless
Walter Block
12. The Minimum Wage: Does it Really Help Workers?
Paul McCormick and Walter Block
13. Delusions of Rising Wages
Walter Block
14. The Minimum Wage Once Again
Walter Block
15. Heritage Stumbles on Minimum Wage
Walter Block
16. The Living Wage: What's Wrong?
Walter Block and Willilam Barnett II
17. Critique of the Minimum Wage Petition
Walter Block
IV. Immigration
18. A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration
Walter Block
19. Is There a Right to Immigration?: A Libertarian Perspective
Walter Block and Gene Callahan
20. On Immigration: Reply to Hoppe
Anthony Gregory and Walter Block
V. Redistributive Justice
21. On Reparations to Blacks for Slavery
Walter Block
22. The Economics and Ethics of land Reform: A Critique of the
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace's "Toward a Better
Distribution of Land: The Challenge of Agrarian Reform"
Walter Block and Guillermo Yeatts
VI. Fringe Benefits
23. Comments on Thomason and Burton, Bruce and Atkins,
Anderson and Meyer, and Green and Riddell: Workers
Compensation and Unemployment Insurance in the US
and Canada
Walter Block
24. Comment on Hum and Simpson: Guaranteed Annual
Unemployment
Gary M. Anderson and Walter Block
VII. Other Topics in Labor Economics
25. The Division of Labor Under Homogeneity: A Critique of Mises
and Rothbard
Walter Block, Per Henrik Hansen and Peter G. Klein
26. Academic Tenure: An Economic Critique
Robert W. McGee and Walter E. Block
27. Comment on Canice Prendergast's "A Theory of 'Yes men'"
28. Cyberslacking, Business Ethics and Managerial Economics
Walter Block
29. Paternalism in Agricultural Labor Contracts in the US South:
Implications for the Growth of the Welfare State
Walter Block
393 pages, paperback, 2008, ISBN: 978-981-270-568-6