LETTERS to the Editor.

Perverse Justice

James K. Galbraith is quite right to point out that the skills gap" is a poor theory to account for income inequality ("The Fallacy of the Skills Gap," March issue).

Galbraith's brief article, though, needs to be read in the larger context of the subtitle to Harry Braverman's 1974 book, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. The "degradation of work" definitely includes the deskilling of the workforce by replacing sophisticated workers with sophisticated machines. The "smarter" the machine, the less skill required of the operator. With that reading, what we've seen since the 1980s is the industrialization of the office, with computers the latest of the "smart" machines.

I'd add one other point. Galbraith says that computers have "reduced the value of older educations relative to newer ones, and made certain short and casual educations (in particular, knowledge of software packages) into reasonable substitutes for long and arduous ones."

In the editorial business, where I work, productivity can be most grossly defined in the words of a former provost of my university, who said "the university's mission was to process the maximum number of students in the most cost-efficient manner." What they learn is economically irrelevant so long as their degree is a valuable piece of "social currency," the provost said.

Reducing "the value of older educations relative to newer ones" is necessary in order to give young workers aid in competing against older workers. Such reduction of the value of old knowledge is also useful for elite groups of older workers with time and training to pick up or even create the new knowledge.

The usefulness of new knowledge or skills is not very relevant. They must be new and fashionable; that's all. Possessing the new skills gets rewarded; not possessing them gets punished.

There is a perverse sort of justice here. If knowledge fashions didn't change, the on-the-job experience of older but still energetic workers would make them nearly unbeatable by new workers who want their jobs. If fashions change and the new workers have the fashionable skills and knowledge, the new kids can be fierce competitors, especially since they can usually be hired for less money.

Reducing "the value of older educations relative to newer ones" aids some people in the economy and hurts others, and understanding that explains a fair amount of economic and political behavior.

Richard D. Erlich Oxford, Ohio

A Question for Claybrook

I read with interest the interview with Joan...