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Unions

Also, not all unions are created equal. I think the UAW overreached and the thought amongst the public of someone making $35 an hour pushing a broom has negatively effected the perception of unions as a whole. There are plenty of occupations where unions are necessary, and plenty of unions that do a lot more than just protecting "lazy workers."
 
DiegoTiger said:
Also, not all unions are created equal. I think the UAW overreached and the thought amongst the public of someone making $35 an hour pushing a broom has negatively effected the perception of unions as a whole. There are plenty of occupations where unions are necessary, and plenty of unions that do a lot more than just protecting "lazy workers."
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Great post. When I was in high school, I worked as an electrician's helper for the maintenance department at a school district. They were all members of the IBEW. Their apprenticeship and training programs were second to none, not to mention the job network they created. And this was in Texas, which doesn't have the most union friendly laws on the books. The guys who were lazy got called out for it, "brotherhood" be damned.

I was also a card carrying member of the NEA once. That was a different story.
 
DiegoTiger said:
Also, not all unions are created equal. I think the UAW overreached and the thought amongst the public of someone making $35 an hour pushing a broom has negatively effected the perception of unions as a whole. There are plenty of occupations where unions are necessary, and plenty of unions that do a lot more than just protecting "lazy workers."
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And the UAW gave up those things to save GM. They gave GM tens of billions of dollars in concessions. Why don't you ever talk about how they did this?
 
RJKarl said:
And the UAW gave up those things to save GM. They gave GM tens of billions of dollars in concessions. Why don't you ever talk about how they did this?
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My first post on this thread was about union workers accepting pension benefits in lieu of wage increases, only to be vilified when the companies failed to fund the pension.
 
RJKarl said:
Trickle down is a scam. David Stockman outed it as such in his book. Even Reagan knew this. Trickle down harms our economy. You make many more rich people by concentrating on the middle and bottom up.
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How did that work out for the Soviet Union?
 
Trickle down makes no sense. Why would rich people want their money to trickle down? Trickle down is a problem, not a solution. For the most part, the rich have fixed the trickle. They have more options to invest with each other instead of by creating jobs. They've made taxes lower so there is less trickle down into governments. It's a flawed strategy to run a country.
 
PhDeac said:
Trickle down makes no sense. Why would rich people want their money to trickle down? Trickle down is a problem, not a solution. For the most part, the rich have fixed the trickle. They have more options to invest with each other instead of by creating jobs. They've made taxes lower so there is less trickle down into governments. It's a flawed strategy to run a country.
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It has proven to be a much better strategy than the other way around. The real solution is just hands-off completely with regard to subsidation above subsistence level, but that will never happen in a democracy.
 
It has NOT been proven to work at all to other than die hard RWers.

"Warren Buffet told ABC's Christiane Amanpour, "The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on." http://voices.yahoo.com/warren-buffet-fallacy-trickledown-8979097.html

http://www.moneyfile.net/budgeting/the-fallacies-of-trickle-down-economics/

Even the conservative Christian Science Monitor says it doesn't work - http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/On-the-Economy/2012/0113/Why-trickle-down-economics-don-t-work
 
I'm not sure if it's indicative of unions, our entitlement mentality, or a bit of both, but as I sat through a 5 1/2 hour meeting that predictably turned into a gripe session yesterday, I was struck by it. A lady was griping about how her prospects for upward mobility were limited by the fact that she didn't have a college education. She actually thought this was unfair. She had been here X amount of years and therefore had more knowledge of the processes than some fresh-blooded, college educated kid. So she was wondering if that could be taken into consideration and if more job announcements could be filled internally. I thought, my god, this lady can barely form a sentence, is about to cry, and wonders why her prospects for upward mobility MIGHT be more limited than somebody else's. And she didn't bitch about veteran's preferences, just college education. She makes enough money to be able to take courses at a community college, yet here she is thinking that her mere presence entitles her to a new job and promotion. And she's on the verge of tears to boot.

So is my union to blame for that? Probably not entirely, but certainly a bit. Unions in general encourage upward mobility from within to the detriment of new blood that may be better qualified for a position. It's somewhat funny, since all the internal hiring deprives them of potential members. The lack of new blood creates a lazy work atmosphere, not to mention one that can be very jaded and unenthusiastic. I should know. I'm counting down the 14 years until I am eligible to retire.
 
California can definitely afford that. It is like they are in a race with Illinois to see who can default on pension obligations first.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
How about this?

Shocking. Giving my Ds a bad name SMH.
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Peoepl are getting a bit excited over something that hasn't happened yet and will very likely be changed:

"Now that the bill is awaiting a final vote on the Senate floor, a spokesman for Speaker Pérez says his office is working with opponents on possible amendments. It's stunning that those conversations are taking place at this late date and that a bill this fiscally irresponsible has gotten this far."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/08/4703397/yet-another-benefits-boost-at.html#storylink=cpy"
 
Deacon923 said:
2. If a corporate executive makes a bad labor deal (usually good in the short term for the executive, bad in the long term after he has retired), the corporation is punished by lowered stock price, may go out of business, and the deal can be restructured through bankruptcy. On the other hand, bad deals cut by one politician have to be paid for by the tax dollars of future generations - there is never an "out" by bankruptcy for state or federal government, and only extremely rarely for municipal governments. I don't think corporations (which are people, remember?) should be protected from their bad short term decisions, but the taxpayers do need to be protected from bad short term decisions by politicians.
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TuffaloDeac10 said:
How about this?

Shocking. Giving my Ds a bad name SMH.
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This is exactly the kind of crap I was talking about in my post way back on page 1 weeks ago. Unions are not inherently evil, but politicians kind of are. Almost all of them will make a long-term promise to buy short term votes, consequences to the future be damned, as long as they get re-elected.
 
WFFaithful said:
would this include monopolies?
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Sure. When were we crushing it as a country compared to the rest of the world with regard to technological innovation? When AT&T had enough cash to fund Bell Labs to do nothing but hang out in buildings resembling the Death Star and research whacky ideas that ended up becoming computers and lasers and cell phones. The government busting up Ma Bell was probably the single most influential commercial action that cripled our technological position in the world. Monopolies are good in many situations, and if they really suck then something else will come along to naturally break it.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Sure. When were we crushing it as a country compared to the rest of the world with regard to technological innovation? When AT&T had enough cash to fund Bell Labs to do nothing but hang out in buildings resembling the Death Star and research whacky ideas that ended up becoming computers and lasers and cell phones. The government busting up Ma Bell was probably the single most influential commercial action that cripled our technological position in the world. Monopolies are good in many situations, and if they really suck then something else will come along to naturally break it.
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That is really only true in the production of goods where there can be qualitative differentiation. Monopolies on commodity production are extremely difficult to break because startup costs are high and the monopolist can almost always afford to undercut any nascent firm. Most of the time they won't even have to.
 
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