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As unions decline, inequality rises

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Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#291

Post by cycomanic »

surement wrote: post #176
susanasj wrote: post #142

I think this is a good article for tech workers to read to provide perspective on our place in the tech economy (particularly Americans): https://organizing.work/2020/12/there-is-something-missing-f... particularly this part: > Early on in my own career in the industry, I felt guilty about making a “good” salary. Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse? Of course, I don’t — they deserve a lot m…

> Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse? prices are largely based on supply and demand, not some vague notion of "deserve"

If they would be based on supply and demand shouldn't nurses salaries gone through the roof recently? In every country I read the news shortage of nurses (and teachers to a lesser degree) is a huge topic and many places are badly understaffed. So why did their salaries not increase dramtically?

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#292

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

nec4b wrote: post #284
7sidedmarble wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we have ethical opinions about the economy?

Do you have ethical opinions for example about Newton's laws in physics? Or do you accept them for what they are?

Humans design the system in which the market operates. Obviously one cannot make an appeal to change physics.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#293

Post by ClumsyPilot »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #289
jmyeet wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rise in middle class ... The "middle class" is a myth and is a propaganda tool for creating dissent. There are really only two classes: 1. Capital-owners. Think Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc; and 2. Workers. This is anyone who trades their labor for an income. This covers everyone from the janitor to LeBron James. The idea of the "middle class" is to create a div…

I am a worker. I am also a capital owner, though on a small scale, from investing the surplus of my pay for my labor. I am far from alone. And the existence of people like me kind of blows up your neat theory.

Do you employ multiple workers, either directly or through your investments, to be able to sustain yourself through profits?

You are the perfect example - someone who's managed to squairrel away a tiny fraction of the capital pie and now imagines himself to be in a different class.

Just because you now own a sandwind does not you a capitalism make.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#294

Post by ben_w »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #239
themitigating wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of living a family in the suburbs has today is like what a rich person a hundred years ago would have. I see people with houses, multiple brand new cars, TVs in every room, and who take a vacation at least once a year complain about the economy their entire life.

The fact that some people don’t know how well they have it is not evidence that everything is fine. Watch a few news reports on poverty in America and you will see that a decent percentage of working adults live with their entire family in a small cramped apartment, can’t afford any vacation, and likely can’t afford emergency medical care if it comes up. And even those people in the suburbs with all those TVs could h…

They didn't say "everything is fine". There's a lot wrong with everyone's economy from the perspective of "we work just as hard, why don't we get the same stuff?"

However, I think you're misapprehending quite how much worse things were a century ago. Now the poor may struggle to afford a PET/CT/MRI/ultrasound scan, or a PCR test, or a dose of antibiotics, or a heart (lung, liver, kidney, bladder, pancreas, ovary, …) transplant, but 100 years ago they did not exist. Diabetes only stopped being lethal just over 100 years ago, the first successful human treatment in the beginning of 1922. Smallpox no longer exists. And so on.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#295

Post by nec4b »

susanasj wrote: post #142

I think this is a good article for tech workers to read to provide perspective on our place in the tech economy (particularly Americans): https://organizing.work/2020/12/there-is-something-missing-f... particularly this part: > Early on in my own career in the industry, I felt guilty about making a “good” salary. Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse? Of course, I don’t — they deserve a lot m…

>> Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse?

You should ask your clients or employers.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#296

Post by rejectfinite »

logicalmonster wrote: post #78
faitswulff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically you’re being downvoted by the same folks who would benefit from unions. American Twitter employees, for instance, would have done a lot better with European labor protections. European Twitter employees probably have a sizable comeuppance on the horizon.

If the European standards are so good, where are all of the influential European tech companies? To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology work…

Spotify, Skype, Minecraft, Battlefield, Ericsson, SAAB

oh and the Linux kernel.

Is your brain broken?

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#298

Post by nec4b »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #292
nec4b wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have ethical opinions for example about Newton's laws in physics? Or do you accept them for what they are?

Humans design the system in which the market operates. Obviously one cannot make an appeal to change physics.

We design car and planes just as well with physics.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#299

Post by dstauffer11 »

js8 wrote: post #92

To everybody who thinks this is just correlation and not causation - read the post properly. They mention: "Labor unions both sustained prosperity, and ensured that it was shared; union bargaining power has been shown to moderate the compensation of executives at unionized firms." And give a link to a study. This result has been seen across countries, and is the CAUSAL link you're looking for.

Oh wow, they have a study! Definitely definitive then, case closed.

More seriously, my wife and I got into an argument about the effects of unions once and this was the best summary I could find: https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/what-unions-d...

(yes it is by the Heritage foundation so their top-line summary probably has some ideological bias but the list of study summaries at the bottom is great) Generally, studies found that unions benefitted the unionized workers at the expense of the most and least skilled workers. And was slightly bad for company investment/earnings long term. But by far my favorite result (and the best study design from the list, imo) was a regression-discontinuity analysis that found no effect of unionization whatsoever:

"Compares companies whose workers voted narrowly for a union with companies whose workers voted narrowly against a union. Since the difference between winning and losing is close to random, this provides an estimate of the causal effect of randomly organizing a given company. Finds that workers who vote to join a union do win certification but that unions have essentially no effect on the firm or the workers. Wages do not rise, and employment and productivity do not fall. Unionized companies are no more likely to go out of business than are non-union firms."

DiNardo, John, and David S. Lee, "Economic Impacts of New Unionization on Private Sector Employers: 1984-2001," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 119, No. 4 (November 2004), pp. 1383-1441.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#300

Post by parthianshotgun »

nec4b wrote: post #284
7sidedmarble wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we have ethical opinions about the economy?

Do you have ethical opinions for example about Newton's laws in physics? Or do you accept them for what they are?

This is sarcasm I'm assuming?
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