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Doug Kasey On Labor Unions
Doug Casey of Casey Research is interviewed by Louis James on the topic of Labor Unions
Contrarian investor and free-market thinker Doug Casey doesn’t mince his words. That’s why he is a sought-after speaker at investment conferences – not only for his spot-on investment advice but for his no-holds-barred views of the markets, economy, and politics. In light of the recent events in Wisconsin, here are his musings on labor unions.
L: Doug, we recently talked about turmoil arising from the clash between labor unions clinging to wages from the fat years and bankrupt governments facing lean-year budgets. You saw that as a sign of more imminent chaos – a warning worth giving – but we didn't really get into the subject of labor unions themselves. Knowing your philosophical bent, I'd bet your views on them might surprise many people…
Doug: My take is that there's nothing inherently wrong with unions, as long as they are voluntary associations of people – they're just associations working in certain trades or in certain places. It's natural. Sure, why not?
But there are problems with the way unions exist in reality today, particularly when membership is made mandatory. That's a violation of the human right to work. When you can't work unless you join the union, and union membership is limited – often to people with political connections or family relations with union officials – it's clear that the union is not a defender of the little guy, but a kind of protection racket. It's a fraud.
That doesn't just harm the individual worker who may wish to enter a unionized field; it has broad economic consequences. When only union members can work, the union can set wages at whatever level they want. That makes the product or service in question more expensive for everyone in society. In other words, unions don't help the average working man – they only help those who can get into the unions. They hurt everybody else: non-union workers, employers, and consumers at large. And it gives union bosses extraordinary power.
L: Always a dangerous thing. As a matter of principle, whenever unions get politicians to write their wishes into law, what they do ceases to be collective bargaining and becomes naked coercion. And of course the politicians pander to the big unions; unions are big blocks of voters. How could it be otherwise?
But Doug, you're the capitalist's capitalist, the world's most unabashed defender of wealth accumulation – aren't you supposed to hate labor unions? Don't you risk being kicked out of the cigar club for The Evil Exploiters of the Masses?
Doug: First off, there's no way I'm giving up my cigars – especially those from Cuba. But how could I object to voluntary associations of people? If unions were more like the Lions Club or Rotary Club – both of which simply encourage people to get together and act in unison – I'd have no beef with any of them. But the fact of the matter is that labor unions, guilds, and so forth are not truly voluntary associations. And that's entirely apart from the corruption that the union movement is riddled with – not just in the U.S., but everywhere in the world.
The good news, however, is that coercive unions are on the way out. They're anachronisms. They're leftovers from the time when people were like interchangeable parts in the giant factories they worked in. People were so replaceable that one person was little better or worse than another – because they were basically biological robots. In the early industrial era, labor was in oversupply, society was poor, and conditions were harsh everywhere. It's understandable why workers felt they had to band together for self-protection. But the industrial era is gone. The assembly line with thousands of workers is totally outmoded. In the global information age, trying to extort high wages for manual labor is pointless. Soon robots will be doing almost everything, then nanomachines will replace the robots. People will only be doing work that requires thought, judgment, and individuality. Those aren't things that can be unionized.
L: I've long thought that Big Labor was a rational market response to Big Business, a lot of which relied on rote behaviors back then. If you were just one little guy on the assembly line and your supervisor didn't like you, what chance did you stand without the backing and solidarity of your fellow laborers? Unfortunately, huge industrial concerns were highly vulnerable to sabotage – it's hard, for example, to police thousands of miles of railroad tracks.
I believe that weakness in the soft underbelly of tight-fisted business owners proved too tempting a target for many workers. And that sort of thuggery prompted management to hire thugs as well, to intimidate workers. I can't really say who started it, but tit for tat brutalized the whole dialogue – and both sides scrambled to secure politicians in a sort of labor-relations arms race. "Labor" and "management" have been at odds – sometimes violent odds – ever since. It's no surprise to me that Marx and Engels, products of the early industrial era, saw everything in terms of class conflict.
Absent government coercion to be used as a weapon by one side or the other, organized labor and management would have worked out their differences in a very different way. If one union bargained collectively for a high wage for their members, another union could bargain for a lower wage for their members and get the jobs. Or the company could decide to hire non-union employees and take on the extra burden of dealing with each employee individually. It would be a normal market process that would discover the right price for reliable labor at any given time and place.
As with so many things, it's the state and its coercive power that's the problem, not the unions. Nor management.
Doug: Exactly. It was also a time in history when society was changing from an agricultural base to an industrial one, so of course there was turmoil. Just like today.
Suppose some Mexicans or Salvadorans living in Detroit got together today and formed a union for Hispanic people and offered to build cars for half the wages the current unions are getting. They could even allow non-Hispanics to join the union – to try to defuse the inevitable accusation of racism – but the deal would be that you join to get steady work in exchange for willingness to work cheap. Would the mouthpieces of Big Labor stand up to defend them? I doubt it.
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Unions?...Do you mean the ABA? the AMA?...the hospital nurses union?...the Chamber of Commerce? Architects? Accountants? AmerInstitute of Areonautics/ Astronautics?
Oh, they have years of training?
I was a degreed chemist [AmChemSoc]; member of AIAA [old AmerRocketSociety]; and retired journeyman electrician IBEW [generally 5-year apprenticeship].
Doug Casey, go to work at a nuclear power plant or industrial electrical installation and, without UNION training and constant upgrading and monitoring from your peers...see how long you last...alive...with all your bodyparts...and still fully functioning...and your employer's plant in working order.
And if you are non-union...where do you suppose your decent wages and benefits and health/safety conditions come from?
...and if they are not decent, what are you going to do aout it? Whine to Mr. Scrooge, the owner?
You want heat, lights and power? and decent quality products? Then you want a "gruntled" working class...of which you, indeed, are already a member, no?
Or are you so rich that you do not need an income?
P.S. Years ago, someone asked, "What would happen to Ted Kennedy if he lost his job as senator?" Perhaps you're in that same class?
Heard the CNBC bozos talking about help wanted ads that specify: "Unemployed need not apply". Why would an employer say that? Answer: Because he doesn't want to hire the culls that got laid off recently. He wants to hire only the best from his competitors. I wonder if he will pay them better? I suppose so, don't you!
NOw, imagine an employer in a county that consistently pays more than the other employers in the area. Many of the employees at other enterprises will want to work at the higher paying company. When the higher paying company hires they will be able to hire the cream of the crop from the applicants. They will, because they pay more, have higher quality of employees.
That is what unions do for their employees and for their employer. They help to maintain a quality workforce. And the prescence of a union shop raises the wages for all of the workers in the area. Because the other employers have to compete, or lose their best workers.
A union is a democracy. The workers vote for their representation. Unions are the only organizations with any clout that speak for workers issues in this country and around the world.
Remember Poland and Lech Walesa and Solidarity? I remember them being celebrated as heroes in their country and in this country.
Do you suppose those people rioting in the middle east are rioting for lower wages? Are they rioting so they can work for less? Are they rioting because they want longer hours and less benefits.
We cheer them on, only because they are the enemies of our enemies?
Union busting is a race to the bottom of the barrel. Reagan started the union busting in this country 30 years ago. And corporate profits have been on the constant rise since. The gap between the rich and the poor in this country has only gotten worse in that time. Both parents in most families have to work to make ends meet. And we wonder why the kids don't do well in school.
Where does it stop? It will stop when the workers in this country make the same wages as the workers in China or Vietnam.
And will lower wages cause employers to hire more workers? To do what??? Who will be able to buy what they sell? Henry Ford knew enough to pay his workers a decent wage, because he knew that his workers could then afford to buy what they were making.
Are you upset about the levels of debt in this country? Then pay people more and they won't have to be so far in debt!!
I am constantly amazed at the unthinking lemmings that inhabit zerohedge.
Think!!! Think!!! There is a cliff ahead.
minor quibble: kids do well in school. Our asian and white students produce a very good return on the investements we make
It is all just a misunderstanding,
unions actually promote hard work at a fair wage.
The public are idiots for believing that they promote mediocrity at an extravagant cost. It is perfectly sensible for uneducated trashmen to make $100K while fresh out of school doctors with $200K in school debt in the same city make $80K.
Makes perfect sense that the states with the highest union membership have the highest unemployment rates. Afterall they raise wages for everyone except they don't count the ones who went from making something to nothing. Typical mythical union bot bullshit propaganda. If a dollar is spent here it can't be spent there dumbasses.
makes perfect sense that the older more experienced UAW makes crappier product than the younger less educated car makers elsewhere.
makes perfect sense that unions promote hard work at a fair wage-WOW almost didn't get that one out it is so fukking hilarious.
Makes perfect sense that temp agencies are booming taking a 30% cut while full time jobs are hard to come by.
Makes perfect sense that the public union member puts the union ahead of the population they serve, like cops, teachers and firemen putting union contracts above serving the public.
Makes perfect sense to force people to join a union if they want to be a public school teacher.
Makes perfect sense for employers to exploit the crap out of workers who have unique and valuable skill sets like the typical union laborer.
Makes perfect sense for everything in the world to drop after an economic bubble burst including Wall St bonuses but not union pay.
They have long sold their soul for the older member vs the younger member, they have long sold their soul for the unproductive member vs the productive member.
I just hope when I die, the union gravediggers of which most are manage to find the right plot to put me in.
Maybe the moron who spent $200K to get an $80K/year job should have saved his money and just got on as a trashman.
How ironic that the pro-union propaganda copy/paste bot decries union bots.
I hope the union gravediggers recognize you for what you are and sell your corpse to a necrophiliac to make ends meet.
Care to comment on my post below?
Unions are no longer an ethical issue, they're an economic issue now, we're in a collapsing economy, companies can't afford them anymore, governments can't afford them anymore, and no, governments aren't going to raise taxes to the sky to keep public unions and public pensions going, both are going to end.
you're right.
All workers have to sacrifice so management bonuses can be supported.
Fuckin bootlicker
Pray tell how stating reality ...as you acknowlegded... makes me or anyone else a bootlicker?
Yea the workers should sacrifice dick wad.
You work your way from the bottom making peanuts, to the top making big bucks...You don't just start out with the best, thats bullshit.
Everyone is given the same oppourtunity and the guy who works harder and makes better decs. ends up at the top with the hot bitch and cadillac health care sitting in his mansion. The guy who slacked off, didnt show up to work and was lazy get's what he earned....a box under the 134th st bridge.
Where does this idea come from that everyone is entitled to the best shit? The only thing you should be entitled to is the same oppourtunity to be succesful as anyone else. You shouldn't be entitled to anything else...not health care, not $40 an hour, not shit...you should be entitled to what you can afford, and what you can afford should be based on what you produce.
right...management just works its way up from the bottom...LOL
and when they fuck up hey, BONUS.
I mean, GFD did we NOT just go through the biggest financial crisis EVER where MANAGEMENT was responsible for the collapse of the economy?
And you people are blaming line stiffs earning more than you do
Not according to Carl Icahn, he says those guys at the top are just ass kissing morons. That's why the banks, companies and the economy are so screwed up.
When I see management taking paycuts alongside their workers and their bonuses vanish, then we can talk.
Upon consideration:
Once upon a time, people Needed kings. Sorry, but it's true. They needed them to coordinate defenses vs. invading hordes. The Danes convinced even our notoriously independent minded Anglo-Saxon forebears they needed one.
And the institution worked. For a long time. So long, people started talking about it being a Divine Right. They took it for granted, and naysayers were . . . well, discouraged.
But the barbarians subsided, and with the invention of the flintlock (which any idiot can use), we found we didn't really Need the institution anymore. Of course, the Old Guard tried like hell to hold on to their cherished privileges. And they managed to drag things out a long time. But, in the end, that institution was generally recognized (even by those who try to emulate it) as an anachronism, best relegated to largely ceremonial roles.
I see unions pretty much the same way. They are an institution that was useful, maybe even essential, but succumbed to the temptation to grow fat on its supposed indespensibility. And thereby hastened ithe end of its privileges.
And to Trav et al , I recommend reading "Making America Poorer". It wil disabuse you of certain romantic notions about what unions in this country are really about.
I have no such notions about unions. In fact I have been a self employed, anti union, conservative most of my adult life. I bought all the BS, listened to Rush 3 hours a day and thought communists were the devil. That all came to an end when the TBTF banks blew up due to fraudulent mortgage financing, fraudulent packaging and selling of derivatives, over leveraging, and lack of oversight by the government because of bribery. Then the very same TBTF banks extorted trillions of dollars from the American taxpayer by threatening our very way of life if we didn't give them the money. The politicians made it plain, when they voted to give it to them even though 90% of the populace was against it, who's side they are on. The businesses took advantage of this situation by laying off those mostly old and at the top of their pay grade workers. A thinly veiled attempt to palm the up keep and health care of these folks off on the taxpayers. Now these same business men only want to hire the young and lower paid to replace those palmed off on the taxpayer. The same TBTF bankers and business men want me to believe it's all the fault of some old woman who teaches school. As a remedy they want me to go along with getting rid of her union by saying, oh it's a public union and that's different. Well, when you leeches get rid of her union the private sector unions will be next. If we allow them to keep us divided, workers lose. Workers stand to lose decent pay, respect as integral parts of the economy, and any influence over those who are elected supposedly to represent them. All of this is being done for no other reason than wage deflation. All you so called "business men" need to think it over too because when the American consumer is living on $2 a day how much of your business are they going to be able to support? I thought long and hard about it and it isn't easy for me to say, but if it comes down between the workers/unions or the TBTF bankers and the screw everyone else business men, I'll side with the workers. The rest of you should too. If you think the elite won't eventually get to you, you are mistaken. I assure you, you are on the list.
I, too, was anti-union as a kid. Mostly because my friends worked for the grocery and had to be in food service unions. Those unions did shit for them except collect dues. They needed a union for the union.
That is different from the institution of unions, which is what most of this site's bootlickers, most of whom think they are channeling Ayn fuckin Rand, rail against. These bootlickers here think they know what "free market" capitalism is, but they have no clue. They believe in the fantasy that if they just work hard enough, they can eventually rise to the position of rentier overlord and get to have their money make money. They don't hate oligarchies, they hate that THEY are not PART of said oligarchy. IOW, they are just jealous bootlicking fools. I woke up when I watched corporation after corporation freeze raises while the WaPo ran articles about how the company "needed" to increase the pay of its executives markedly, and did, and the company's other executives (friends/cronies) justified it. And we ALL watched as these same managers GUTTED and DESTROYED nearly every company they touched and then got BK rentention bonuses and bailouts for doing so. And still the bootlickers keep on licking, hoping to lick their way up to a VP slot that they don't have the ethnicity or familial connections to land. LOLWhat is being represented here is a drift by the United States from a nation of individual rights to a nation of group rights. Unless you belong to a powerful organization you will not have any representation in this government. The recent Supreme Court decision granint individual rights to corporations is a move in this direction that would make our founding fathers vomit breakfast. This is fascism baby, get used to it.
The individual has rights, its just that they were designed for stupid people thus the resultant 'powerful organizations'.
1. Watch mindless drivel on TV/internet (Media)
2. Eat unhealthy foods (Agricorp)
3. Credit (usury, consumer + education)
No, don't get use to it, fight it.
What a misinformed fool or lame attempt at 'hey some of my best friends are in unions'. Might as well come on out and say that them unions hold the last nuggets of wealth the blue collar proletariats have, and us bankers need to get it.
No instead we get all kinds of idiotic dipshits on here posting on how worthless unions are and sucking the tit, blah blah blah. This is just crumbs you know. The bankers already stole it all, and you stupid fucks want to whine about the crumbs??
OK, whatever then. So I dont care for AFSCME and the public sector unions, either. They are completely atrophied and most likely have the least productive workers representing them as union leadership. Management always has the ability to fire someone, but in the public sector you will find the absolute worst mangement that are more interested in drinking coffee for 30 years so they can get THEIR pension.
Get rid of the seniority model in unions and the ponzi schemed pension structure and you might get better workers. Get involved in politics and you might get better management o f your local municipality.
The dimwits against unions don't seem to mind that the pro sports are full of them. Oh I forgot, they call them associations instead of labor unions. That makes all the difference I guess.
well written tripe; i lost interest when a member of the investor class asserts human labor will no longer be needed, everything will be automated, except his job
and who's idea was it to build a legal system where profit is the motivating factor of reward? those with capital or those without?
might of sounded good when we were all farmers, but now? why a whole isle of laundry detergents? we need this competition? how come companies profit from harmful things, nobody oversees this? just a free for all for profit? sulfide smelting, natural gas fracting, aluminum created flouride dumped into our drinking water
-- a blame the poor for being poor . . . but never blame the rich for the harm all their profits create
What did one expect around here at ZH? Probably 95%+ couldn't pass a high school physics exam. Did anyone really expect these knuckleheads would be pro-union? Minor league hustlers with bankster envy is what they are.
the race to the bottom is really the greatest wealth transfer in all of history; and our owners intend on cashing their checks of profit, so the rest of us pay in a plethora of ways
Since "Fuck" is the juice word in this thread let me just say;
Fuck all you "cock fucks" that have never owned or ran a business utilizing Union labor. I owned/operated a successful union construction business for 19 years and because the Unions became so bloated the costs are approaching "unmarketable". (My best year I employed 72 people)
When the hourly "Costs" of a carpenter, laborer, finisher or bricklayer approach $103+ per hour "Costs", (including OH, GL, WC, SUT, FUT, FICA and Union fringe) try and market that. I can tell you that the sugar money is shrinking for these over bloated union members because people realize that in this economy, that they can obtain these so called “union-trained specific skills" (sarc) for a better price than $4,532.00 per week. (That’s with a 10% margin, for you historian fucks that think I can't add)
A Union member is paid based on his "affiliation" and not his/her "productivity" or "professionalism"
So unless you have experience dealing with, or creating jobs for, and/or paying for said Unions SHUT THE FUCK UP and go back to reading your history books and debating the past. Notice above, I used the word Owned/operated, as in past tense because I told all the Unions to go fuck themselves.
Biatchez !
I lovez me some ZH
Even with the swearing, your point is well made and realistic. I have former union family members and friends who managed union and nonunion shops (see earlier posts) and what you say agrees pretty much with what they told me. Labor unions have had a big hand in putting themselves out of business. Their last refuge will be government.
"Even with the swearing, your point is well made"
I used the "F" word to compliment this thread as I have never seen it used so much.
Cheers !
Why didn't you do like everyone else and hire illegal workers? You could have gotten them to work for $10 and hour. Heck they'll even roof on the third floor with out safety ropes or hard hats. Save you a few bucks there. Then if you decide you need more money for an extra week in the islands you could have cut their pay 20%, they would still show up for work. You may get those who weren't around many construction sites, during the boom, to believe that you were paying some American a $100 bucks an hour, but I don't believe it. I was on sites every day from day light to dark and maybe 10% of the workers were Americans if that many. The rest were provided by the pimps who you construction company owners paid to supply you with workers with out papers. They gave you fake SS numbers and every 90 days the guys like you would call them into the trailer to get another number from them.
You construction guys are as bad as the TBTF bankers. During the boom when the workers had some leverage and could have gotten a higher wage because of high demand and low supply most of you scum bags decided to short circuit the supply/demand curve and artificially suppress wages by bringing in illegal workers. So, the American worker didn't even have a chance to build a nest egg in the boom and now are bearing the brunt of the bust. You bunch of ingrate bankers and business owners can't even have a bit of care for those folks YOU screwed over. Thank you very much and back on you, fuck you.
Finally someone who has been there and done that.
WTF is your problem?
Nobody, certainly not me, isn't suggesting you can't FIRE all your union members if you see fit!
That is free market capitalism. A union that would fuck itself as so many have is stupid and should be put out of business.
however, the INSTITUTION of labor power is the issue here that the bootlickers shit on, not the actual function of unions.
I say let labor and management fight it out...if management thinks it can do better, fine. If labor thinks it can do better, fine. Let them negotiate.
the notion that we're good to go with H1Bs and 250:1 CEO:worker payscales...I mean fuck that shit.
People who exploit non union labor are real scum.
To Protest Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Picketshttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704288204575362763101099660.html
"For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.
So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines.
Yea or something else like people died for them in the past but they can't get off their asses to even picket for themselves anymore.
Can it possibly get any more ludicrous?
Which leads to the question how many pretend union members have been protesting in Wisconsin?
But some CEO somewhere is getting vastly overpaid so anything the union does regardless of how regressive is all OK afterall people died trying to better themselves at some point in time so all of civilization should just bend the fukk over and grease up anytime a labor union is involved.
The shame of it all is some of them actually are better than worse but the inability to separate each as the brothers can't help but support the worst of the worst makes discerning good from bad impossible. It is a take it all or leave it all and most have the right idea given those are the terms the unions dictate.
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i love my union...i make lots of money. i don't care if workers choose to work without a union. their choice. my choice is to enjoy the fruits of it...chaching.
The following observation has been completely overlooked in the bloated narrow minded rhetoric being bandied about here by the union decriers:
Think of the US Constitution, it works because of checks and balances between three branches. Despite its shortcomings, its success cannot be denied.
Now think of the following three legged stool:
1) Government/State
2) Corporations
3) Labor
If you suppress one the legs, you will have a problem.
Suppressing 2) is communism
Suppressing 3) is fascism
Now each leg is guilty of excesses, evils or whatever. To believe otherwise is naivete. However, all three legs must be in place.
Lets use the example of Germany, here is country with essentially little or no resources and yet it is a powerhouse exporter of high quality goods and has higher upward mobility than the US. Why? In my view it is simple, a cursory look at the history of post-WW II politics in Germany shows that anytime one of the legs got uppity, the other 2 combined to check it.
In the US, the labor leg has been chopped off, the result is fascism that is slowly morphing into feudalism...
Funny thing is that if the 14th amendment was changed to read "natural person", we would be on our way to fixing things....
I agree that labor has been dwindling since Reagan despite the loud crying sounds emanating from those that would eliminate the remaining 12% of the workforce that is unionized. Adjusting the 14th to eliminate the ridiculous notion of corporate personhood would go a long way towards keep 1) from being owned and manipulated by 2) to the detriment of 3) and the non-unionized workers as well. We should be careful to insure that breaking that link doesn't provide an opportunity for 3) to take ownership of 1) as we do so, but that's a simple matter of having publicly-financed elections and eliminating ALL large-scale campaign donations from unions, corporations, or other large groups of "bundlers". It amazes me that progressives and libertarians can't band together and eliminate the crux of the problem which I see as the lobbyists. It will be much easier to scale government down to size when the vested interests are silenced and the voice of the people can be clearly heard.
The ingrained nature of America is such that 3) will never usurp 2)....
You do correctly divine that the rewritten 14th does remove the "free speech" of corporations with regard to campaign financing and it could be used to control lobbyist...
Another cute factoid, is that normalizing the proportional representation of congress to the levels of 1830 would result in 10,000 seats... Not saying this is a good thing, but it would go a long way to having the common man heard again.
"In the US, the labor leg has been chopped off, the result is fascism that is slowly morphing into feudalism..."
do not accept your premise. The US constitution was nullified by corrupt public officials and Judiciary,,all our problems result from that..equal protection under the law, private property rights, state rights all were undermined we lost the check and balance of our founding documents.
criminals at the highest level now rule and most of society suffers.
You choose not to accept my premise and then you do nothing to refute it. Have you ever had a classical debate about anything?
flak, bit slower witted then usual this AM.
but i will try: the premise that a society is broken down in the 3 leg example you used is at it's center not the issue.
the issue is the failure of a modern gov to adhere to it's own laws, to operate within the constitution bounds. this failure is what all else falls from.
Germany has done well for it's people and the German people are of one culture a great advantage..America is so diverse it is destroying us..you cannot use Germany to explain the economy of America..so your example is not appropriate.
I am not using Germany to explain the economy of the US. I am pointing out that properly functioning capitalist society requires all legs to be balanced. And you argue that one leg is not necessary.
You cannot deny the success of the German model. You are willing to say that American workers are not their equal? Or that German managers are superior? Or German engineers are more clever? Manufacturing is a partnership there. It is win-win.
And surely the diversity that existed from the days of Ellis Island was not debilitating. It occured while creating the greatest industrial powerhouse of the 20th century. Your cultural comment smacks of racism.
American workers are not equal to the german worker..perhaps 40 or 50 yrs ago American workers were much better..we support millions of non productive illiterate minorities both legal and illegal..a burden germany does not share (a few turks sure but no way equal)
your maufacturing is a partnership in germany is exactly what it is not here..Gov rapes the non protected industry here and the workers suffer the most.
PS what is the tariff rate on US made items in Germany north of 20% last I looked.
Ummm.. Germany inherited a shit-show when it reunified, it took 10 years to regain their mojo...
And I defy you to go into a bar in Peoria or Tacoma and announce:
You will get the shit kicked out you....
If the US institued a carbon tax and applied it imports, you would see a remarkable resurgence of american manufacturing. For example, steel, On a total carbon basis, the US is #1 by far...
Ellis Island was not diversity by the modern standard, as those were all white people.
Diversity now means blacks in disproportionate abundance, affirmative action quotas, and everything OTHER than merit-based awards.
Hell, some group cut a cystic fibrosis fundraiser effort because all the victims tend to be white.
Cut the racebaiting and "dat beez raycis" bullshit.
You're clearly passionate in your beliefs, but might want to try connecting the dots a bit more. Throwing out convenient bogeymen like 'corrupt public officials' and 'criminals at the highest level' is a bit too nebulous to sway anyone but the choir and makes you very easy to dismiss as a mere con-spi*-racist.
*satisfactory performance increase
doubled up
My grandfather had a business many years ago where a union came into town trying to unionize every business they could.
They came into my granfather's business, sat him down, and said they were going to certify his site and there wasn't a (this is a quote) "f'in thing he could do about it".
He said "wow congratulations and led them out the door.
He in turn walked out into the warehouse and fired everyone on the spot, closed the warehouse and moved into finance where he could make money without the threat of racketeers. (of course now the racketeers are in finance)
True story. Was he right? Yes - IMHO, The western world through unionized labour has lost it's ability to become competitive. A janitor making 30 bucks an hour is not competitive.
The union ruse that everyone is entitled to a fair wage is full of crap. Why should a guy who dropped out of school make 30 bucks an hour? Ludicrous. Yet the sucker that goes to college and starves for half his life to pay off his loans makes the same?
It was a shame to lose his business but the racketeers would have crushed him.
As it turned out many businesses in that town closed down due to obscene labour costs and uncompetitiveness.
We are simply reverting to the mean.
The lowly taxpayer is broke and these crooks need a haircut
A big one
why should an executive who BK'd a company get a retention bonus?
Yet here you are bitching over an effing janitor making peanuts?
Every single incompetent CEO is worth 250 of these janitors. How much did the banksters cost this society and you are worried about fkin janitors?
snowball, dear socialist/communist..unions benefit the "workers"
until they are priced out of their jobs.
very rarely do they provide new jobs for the millions they lost to lower cost of labor states and nations.
However Union bosses continue to live very well.
splain that if you can..love ya snow just wish you would unfreeze that snow encrusted mind.
Care to comment on what I posted above? Can you explain the high wages in German manufacturing?
Yeah, nothing like a real example to dispel the bullshit of narrow minded thinkers... go back to Glen and Rush and your worship at the altar of fascism, Fox
The only thing pricing people out of their jobs is profit motive; always low prices means always low wages at Wal-Mart.
There are no benevolent corporations providing 'millions of jobs' unless it is absolutely necessary for their bottom line and they will eliminate those jobs as soon as they are able to or if another government with its boot on their workers' necks can do it cheaper (I have no love of communists).
How many of the jobs moved overseas were not unionized? Hint: only 12% of workers in the US are unionized and only 7% if you aren't counting the public-sector types. The pigeon-hole principle dictates that your logic needs some work.
I'm a self-employed cat, so, if I go on strike, I have to take turns picketing and breaking my own picket line. It's exhausting, but I'm happy to report that management and I get along very well so it doesn't come up often.
snow, knew a ILGWU rep who was a die hard communist, fought franco in spain ..every shop he represented in NE Pennsylvania closed and the jobs were sent south. He still had a job.
at that time union workers were 30% of the workforce. each job lost in NE PA was a union job.
I never said corps were benevolent- but gov was supposed to look out for our workers and business in providing adequate tariff protection and not as they did subsidizing the moving of jobs off shore.
millions of jobs were lost as a direct result of policy at our highest levels of government.
not due to corps and business which took the open door shown to them by our own government.
And who may I ask, asked them to open the door? That combined with the naive economic philosophy of Reagan and his Supply Siders. These geniuses could not grasp that productive capital and economic rents cannot be taxed on an equal footing. They are not equivalent. This has led to self-reinforcing shitshow we are now in...
There is no debt crisis. There is an income crisis. The inability of labor in the US to withstand the mobility of capital is at hand. Wages and opportunities have been replaced by planned obsolescence and marketing. If you think we are a society better off with $19 coffee pots replaced every year, than $29 coffee pots guaranteed for a lifetime, keep chasing that manufactured global dream. The disdain for labor is seldom from first hand experience here, the repetition of Koch-like propaganda is however, rampant.
Oh in case anyone wants to debate the success of Thatcherism, I offer one simple graph...
http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/
Select United Kingdom... All that oil did was give something for the Banksters to loot... Read it and weep.
Collective bargaining is part of collectivism!
Having worked in a union-represented job, my own experience has brought nothing but loathing for them. They are a bunch of bullies and tyrants. I would rather have dealt with management any day than the union thugs!
One day, a union steward happened to catch me alone in a conference room. He threatened physical violence against me and destruction of my personal property if I ever crossed the picket line. I had NEVER said I would; he simply made an assumption. I filed a complaint against him; he received neither censure nor even a hand slap!
Later, that same union steward was faced with a dilemma. He had already benefited from THREE drug rehabs at company expense. That was the company's limit. He was now caught doing drugs a FOURTH time! He quit his job! The union lawyers then filed suit, claiming that since he was addicted to drugs, he was incapable of resigning and the company should have therefore refused his resignation. He was given not only his job back, but a cash award as well!
Another woman, also a union steward, only worked about two months during the 4 1/2 years we worked together. The rest of the time, without any physical disability whatsoever, she was out on "benefits" due to stress. Work is stressful, poor dear! When she finally ran out of paid-for-doing-nothing benefits, she finally came back to work. She worked two weeks and went out on benefits again.
This is unionization. It is legalized thuggery and racketeering. The more deeply employees become become loyal to the unions, the more sickening their entitlement mentality becomes.
Everyone has their anecdotes... care to debate the points I raised above?
Oh, yeah! Nice juicy stories about the communist thugs. Assuming they are true, it would appear that they taught you everything there is to know.
I'm sold. /sarc
Bob, you detect the crickets? I do...