The Crisis of Cost Recovery and the Waste of the Industrialised Nations

Abstract

This paper argues the case for shifting the problem of advanced country competitivity onto the terrain of social accounting. It introduces new concepts such as cost recovery and social settlement, before presenting a range of empirical evidence which demonstrates the nature and extent of the current Western crisis about cash generation. The argument and evidence has important implications for policy. Under present conditions, free trade between high and low wage countries is likely to increase disemployment and encourage a pathological mutation of corporate behaviour and social institutions in the advanced countries.