The problem in Mexico about the labor market is totally different, the unemployment rate is in average 5 or 6%, but a lot of people live in a informal economy o with a poor job with a really low o zero benefits. This is the result of the application of neoliberal reforms and establish a macroeconomic policy than only focus in low the inflation. If I found some information about your topic I will send you. 

Thanks Isaac,

Unfortunately, neoliberal reforms are comming back in Argentina

Demian,  Your thesis, given the context you describe, first begs the question "From what, or whose, point of view and how do you define "better"?"

Better for the long-term mental, attitudinal and social well-being of people in employment, and those coming into employment, so that they don't become too angry and hence destructively violent?

Better for constructing the most overall cost effective means of generating fear of losing their jobs amongst those who are now employed, or may become employed, so as to gain their peaceful acquiescence with minimal cost to the military and policing budgets and damage to public infrastructure in the face of policy led downward pressures on their real wages?

Perhaps it would be most cost effective, and better for long-term social stability, for schools, from primary upwards, to teach the neoliberal belief system and the divinely ordained right of any person to accumulate to themselves as much as they are able, by whatever non-illegal means however immoral and unethical they may be, the value produced by as many other people as they can arrange for?  It would be cheaper... and psychologically less damaging than otherwise necessary fear of unemployment , starvation and sickness.

Dear Robin, I´m affraid that neoliberal beliefs have already been (deeply) introduced in Latin America, not only by means of the educational system but also (and mainly) through mass-media hypnopaedia. We are profoundly schooled in the Austrian perspective but poor people do not appear to be easely convinced that chronic starvation is at their own fault (not in democracy, without some form of "cout d'etat" -as now in Brazil-).

Therefore, after more than one decade of populist governments (I prefer to say: progressive governments), conservative alternatives regain power in our region (Peru, Argentina, Brazil, ...) trying to quickly reverse the ongoing income distribution dynamics. Unfortunately for them, aggregate demand is endemically wage-led, so, standard labor-discipline devices (Mass Unemployment) are not plaussible long-term alternatives (not only in political terms because of its negative effects on corporation sales through decreasing wage-shares). This is why I'm asking about emerging literature related to alternative methods like (termporary concentrated and mass-media amplified) Mass layoffs, looking for discipline (fear) without pushing unemployment so far.

Thanks again for your answer, and let me know if you have more information about that.

Technically, the question could be redefined as: Which is the best method to reduce labor-costs for tradable goods without destroying domestic consumption through mass unemployment (other than conservative-rejected-Diamand-like "offset devaluations with multiple exchange rates"? 

Are mass layoffs the emerging answer for (mass media protected) conservative governments?

Restating, you would appear to be looking for "evidence of tri-partite collusion between government, economic ownership and media in the exaggeration of economic 'bad news' to foster fear and compliance in the labour force".

This dynamic has appeared, to me, to be bound up in the political and economic arguments in favour of 'flexible labour policies' and the development of a 'flexible labour force'.  We know this to be a 19th century artefact seeking to treat labour a just another factor of production for which, dogma decrees, a free market must always exists for its most efficient pricing, reallocation and... relocation.

I doubt that any serious money has therefore ever been applied to any non-sympathetic studies of how 'flexible labour markets' are created, managed, stabilised and expanded.  On the other hand I suspect that you will have no problem locating papers that deal with the questions more 'positively''!

Perhaps you would do well to examine and analyse the recent political and management science research in this area, recasting their inferences and recommendations through critical discourse.  Perhaps, one would find amongst existing critiques of these sources the emerging literature that you seek.

Papers posited in directly critical terms would be unusual.  Firstly those they engage in this type of activity often do so from a level of religious belief so deep that it is not seen to be anything more than being the 'obvious and right thing' to be doing.  Those that who are not so gullible are very self-aware of the moral opprobrium with which society, and the 'labour force', would view such actions and hence of the political and commercial consequences of being too closely identified with them.  They would not publicly discuss or admit to any overt intention to manipulate public perceptions.   Any 'studies' they commission in this area would remain confidential between themselves and the big-name marketing consultancies and advertising agencies who already rely upon the business flowing to them from the same sources.

Best regards,  Robin

Yes Robin, 

This is what I'm looking for but somewhat different. I not only need "evidence of tri-partite collusion between government, economic ownership and media in the exaggeration of economic 'bad news' to foster fear and compliance in the labour force" but also to demonstrate that this strategy is more sustainable than mass unemployment for wage-led economies with conservative governments looking for reducing labor costs in tradable sectors (like almost all Latin American ones).

I agree with you, I found nothing about this in my discipline. It's time to move on to political science and critical discourse.

Thanks Again!

Demian

Perhaps the 'demonstration' would come from the argument that begins with the observation that sustained maximisation of profit in a changing world requires a constant focus on the minimisation of transaction costs, however they may be constituted.  It follows from this that minimisation of the transactions costs relevant to the sustained provision of an effective labour force requires that labour force to be acquiescent and compliant at minimum cost and least damage to their motivational profiles - they have to be de facto complicit in the supply of their labour even if not actually willing.  This 'ideal' is unlikely to be consistent with the presumed high physical costs of physical intimidation, a route which also has decreasing returns to length of time pursued since populations become inured and resentful to physical force and will eventually resort to similar physicality.    The least cost sustainable alternative, we know from the historical record, are those in which the populations believes in the desired status quo.  It might be argued that for fifty years the paradigm by and large enjoyed the benefits of such a system of belief across all major economies.  But just as in past civilisations and dispensation, once general credibility ceases to hold the population in general in thrall it cannot be recovered.  Only if that credibility and belief is able to be reinstated will you see papers appearing describing how it works and thus demonstrate, retrospectively the policy's effectiveness.    It will not happen.  'Advertising and political spin is only effective in the short-term.  It is also transparent and general awareness is well embedded throughout society.  Unless the entire media industry acts to common purpose and consistently and effectively transforms the social reality we each of us experience then the necessary level of willing belief cannot be built up, locally in Southern South America, sufficiently to be self-sustaining.  It can only ever be imposed as an overt example of psychological and mental violence to the person.  It will therefore be costly as well as being unsustainable and it will not achieve its objectives of creating a compliant and acquiescent low-transaction cost supply of flexible labour.

We can expect to see more and more frequently these types of desperate and ill-thought out rear-guard actions from the  neoclassical axis, on the left and the right, as they obsessively refuse to confront and evolve away from the fundamental institution tenants of a limitless accumualtive cadastrelism by individuals unbound by the needs and rights of society, and effectively unaccountable to it.   I doubt many papers will appear.  Far fewer perhaps than potential and actual authors of them will disappear meanwhile.

Robin

Thanks Robin, 

I hope you're wrong (hope is powerful than beliefs and clearly more stubborn than rationality). Notwithstanding, we are seeing that physical intimidation is spreading again in Latin America, all togheter with regressive income redistribution, mass layoffs and democracy disruptions. The nineties are comming back.

I will keep looking for some papers about this issue (knowing that, as you clearly state, transparent research on this issue will be rare). Thanks a lot Robin, this conversation has been really inspiring.