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As unions decline, inequality rises

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Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#341

Post by rexpop »

geraldwhen wrote: post #337
KevinGlass wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that everything is designed around cars is one of the invisible nooses around the neck of America. When you look around and notice that everything is covered in cars, that's hard to unnotice. All those cars, roads, parking lots, highways, box stores, mile of sewer and water pipe, cost a staggering amount and are going to start costing a lot more to maintain over the next decade as systems age out and need re…

Nobody wants to live in apartments. Maybe 20-something’s with no prospect of family, but that’s it.

The post to which you're responding said nothing about apartments. Do you mind connecting a few dots for those of us less well-versed in the presumptions of your milieu?

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#342

Post by nec4b »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #312
nec4b wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We design car and planes just as well with physics.

This is not analogous. You likened criticizing our economy (inclusive of the state of various laws that determine how it impacts people) to criticizing physics itself (to suggest that doing so is unreasonable). The economy is like a singular, gigantic vehicle we all occupy. It abides certain natural laws (such as human nature, and the scarcity of certain resources), but the vehicle itself is designed by some of our f…

Sure it is. You and other passengers are trying to design the vehicle by ignoring human nature, scarcity, etc. (the physics). Because you are asking yourself why does the piston deserve all the fuel and not the headlights.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#343

Post by i_am_toaster »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #260
JasonFruit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, what they oppose isn't unions as such, but compulsory union membership. They consider that a union should arise from the expression of worker needs, and a union that they are forced to join and that exists whether they want it or not might lack incentives to represent their needs instead of the needs of the union. It's kind of like the saying about organizations in general: eventually they come to s…

That's been my experience as well. It's pure reactance psychology. From the first paragraph of the wiki page > Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when an individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's choice of response and/or range of alternatives. When I think about the peop…

The lack of empathy and unfavorable labeling of opinions that differ from your own is not something you should get in the habit of.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#344

Post by RhysU »

ben_w wrote: post #265
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.

Most, myself included, have a very limited understanding of the economy we are part of, so I'm not surprised by complaints. Every so often, someone making 2 or 3 times the national average income makes an ass of themselves on TV by claiming they're economically disadvantaged. In some senses, you don't even have to go to the suburbs to be unimaginably better off now than it was possible to be a century ago, because a…

> Every so often, someone making 2 or 3 times the national average income makes an ass of themselves on TV by claiming they're economically disadvantaged.

Someone making 3X the US national median income is paying roughly the US national median income in federal/state/local taxes. They're paying a median working citizens' earnings in taxes.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#345

Post by scarmig »

todd8 wrote: post #316
subpixel wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a hundred years ago, a bunch of immigrants from places like Germany or Spain or Italy could arrive in New England (including New York City), perform manual labor, provide for their families on one income, and pool their additional money to _build whole buildings_ as social or fraternal clubs. That really puts things into perspective for me.

I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Detroit. It was a place where a high school diploma could get you a secure job that would support a middle class family. It’s all changed and Detroit is now half the size it once was while cities like Houston and Austin have grown tremendously. Why did that happen? Did corrupt unions kill the goose that laid the golden eggs? Or was it poor management of the automotive giants that a…

My sense is that German automotive companies dealt with Japanese competition better than American ones did, though I'd love for someone who knows about the history of the industry to chime in. Germany had strong unions and was a market leader then, similar to the US, so it suggests something was wrong with American automakers, labor unions, or the American government that led to the disaster.

I wonder if Germany was more aggressive with tariffs to protect automakers from competition.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#346

Post by runarberg »

nec4b wrote: post #336
runarberg wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly question, so silly in fact that I suspect it is only intended as reductio ad absurdum (which can be a fallacy if based on a false or inadequate premise). A carpenter is entitled to the fruits of their labor, which can adequately be provided with money.

>> This is a silly question, so silly in fact that I suspect it is only intended as reductio ad absurdum (which can be a fallacy if based on a false or inadequate premise). I commend you for knowing logical fallacies. Though it would be even better if you were able to demonstrate those fallacies instead appealing to your own authority. >> A carpenter is entitled to the fruits of their labor, which can adequately be p…

There are plenty of examples of Reductio ad absurdum being a fallacy because of a false or inadequate premise. Zeno’s paradox[1] being a famous one. The false premise being that you can actually add infinite number of times (modern mathematics take the limit as n approaches infinity).

Here the prime candidate for the premise being wrong is to equate the work of carpenter working in their own enterprise at a project, to that of a google worker, working at Google’s enterprise for any project their management tells them to.

The former gets the fruit of their labor in full when the job is finished and paid for, the latter is suffering from a systematic exploitation as each time the stock goes up in price (or when dividends are issued) the shareholders get the fruits of the worker’s labor, as opposed to the workers them selves.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#347

Post by ww-picard-do »

bombolo wrote: post #38
Zeyka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and I'm not trying to devalue their beliefs, I'm just trying to understand how they can be against something that would benefit them.

They think "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger bonus!" rather than realising that their boss is the former lazy coworker. Basically the american idea that deserving people (aka myself) will magically prevail.

You are being very patronizing. Other people in this thread have given reasonable explanations for not liking unions.

You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about it is rude.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#348

Post by acdha »

RhysU wrote: post #338
acdha wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close. That rich person had servants, could go on lengthy vacations, etc. and most likely they had substantial passive income. The key thing to understand is the difference in how precarious those situations are: that affluent suburbanite has some shiny things but their cash flow is much higher than their wealth. A TV in every room is a rounding error on the $11k/year each of those new cars costs on average,…

> if your income depends on showing up to work daily, all of that can go away with a single health incident which leaves you unable to work. Yes, but there are long-term disability insurance policies available for purchase that largely remove that risk. It's a cost, of course. And, at least in the US, there are public programs that provide disability coverage already figured into one's taxes: https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/

Which somewhat reduce that risk. People on SSI are usually struggling, not affluent, and actually getting those benefits can be a struggle for people with conditions less clear cut than, say, losing limbs.

I’m not saying they’re not worth having but again that there’s a big gap between someone being rich and a middle-class worker with decent active income.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#349

Post by danaris »

defphysics wrote: post #181
Zeyka wrote: post #3

I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions, maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of them? It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how someone, say Jerry, 60 year old factory worker from idaho, can be against unions...

> see themselves as embarrassed millionaires I see this "embarrassed millionaires" line a lot. It seems unbelievably cynical. Do you really think a meaningful fraction of workers are thinking "I'll oppose unions because even though I'm hurting workers, it'll be good for me when I'm rich"?

It's rarely a specific and conscious line of thought during the decision-making process. The more common case is making the working class feel like they're "just like" the wealthy—playing on the narrative that "anyone can get rich in America"—and then selling them on policies that actively work against their own interests, and for the interests of the wealthy. This step often looks like talking about things that would primarily affect the very wealthy as if they would hurt everyone. Things like "taxation is theft", "increasing taxes punishes success", "government small enough to drown in a bathtub", etc.

Re: As unions decline, inequality rises

#350

Post by danaris »

Aunche wrote: post #61
Zeyka wrote: post #3

I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions, maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of them? It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how someone, say Jerry, 60 year old factory worker from idaho, can be against unions...

A lot of people have had bad experience with unions. Often times, it's only people with high seniority that see the most benefit from unions. This is why the railroad unions negotiated for more pay instead of paid sick days. Pension payouts are based on the average of the highest 60 paying months. Senior employees who are due to retire in a few years just need bear a few more tough years to enjoy their significantly…

Have they really? Personal bad experiences?

Or is this just the prevailing narrative that's been sold to us over the past 30-50 years, and there are too few actual unions and union jobs left to effectively counter it?

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