JayB

Military intervention to suppress domestic wages. Feel free to expand on that one. The argument that if it weren't for employers artificially suppressing wages, we'd have no need for welfare is another curious point. Laws that make certain employers of limits to union negotiations? Are you referring to right-to-work laws here? BTW - do you reject the notion that there's any connection between the economic value of a given worker's skillset and their compensation? That seems to be the only manner in which one could make some of the associations that you've set forth here. I don't doubt that employers have the desire to pay below market wages, and would avail themselves of opportunities to do so, but unless one assumes that they can restrict the rights of their workers to seek employment elsewhere and make other employers "off limits," its difficult to see how this is the least bit analagous to the case where certain employers are off limits to individuals who do not wish to join a union. Ultimately one of the best protections for workers is a healthy job market, and if a particular employer is attempting to pay workers less than they can make elsewhere - they face a very difficult task unless they can somehow prevent the said workers from leaving the company and seeking better pay with a new employer. If the said worker has no options that pay any better anywhere else, how is it that employer in question is actually paying *below market* rates? With regards to "our system", you seem to be under the impression that unions are the only portion of "the dichotomy" that acts on behalf of workers, which is hardly the case, unless you are prepared to claim that legislation protecting workers and the various institutions that are charged with enforcing it count for nothing, as does the average worker's right and responsibility to act in their own interest as they understand it. BTW - are you a member of a union? If not, how is it that you are managing to get by?

Such a goldmine.... " As to believing The Rapture will happen any day. YES! YES! and YES! I do not think it will be 10 or 20 years down the road. We are told we will not know the DAY or the HOUR, but we will know the season and we are in that season. I get like a young child on Christmas night, YOU know something good is waiting down stairs under the tree. You know as soon as its light out you get to go down those stairs and open your gifts. You know they will be the greatest gifts just for you. You know you will love them. You know the morning is a LOOOOOOOOOOOng ways off, you have been laying in bed just counting the minutes or maybe its still 2 hours or 1 hour away. You do not have a clock in your room so it could be just 30 minutes or even 10 minutes. BUT you do know it will not be long now because you have been waiting and looking at the sky. You see the signs in the sky and its tuning the right shades for the dawn. Thats how I feel about the Rapture I know the signs are all in place. We do not have to wait on anything else to take place. I know He promised He would be coming back for us. I know the season is here and now. NOT years away. Wow did not know I was going to go on and on." And it's just a single thread....

...The Rapture. Seriously. http://www.rr-bb.com/ "I just had a terrible thought flash through my mind. I imagined how it would feel for maybe a few people on this board who come here for comfort after the rapture, to assure themselves that it really wasn't the rapture they missed but some other freak thing where people disappeared. Upon their first post, which may only be answered by 1 or 2 others, an overwhelming sense of aloneness will set in. The post will sit there, crickets chirping, night falling, and hope will be slipping..... I suddenly feel such sadness for these few. Please, everybody, talk to God, be sure you've submitted yourselves to Him fully, hold onto nothing of your self, but grasp for Him with every cell of your being. Don't be the one lonely poster at the end. " ................................ "Hello, Im kinda new, been reading posts for awhile. I know that people have been saying The Rapture is near for years and years. Almost every year someone will say..ITS THIS YEAR... !!!!WARNING!!!!!!And I also DO NOTwant to get peoples hopes up..or set a brother or sister up to get discouraged if it is years from now. But, I hope its ok to ask, has anyone else sensed that his RETURN is anyday or week? That we are closer then we even know? I know we do not go by feelings, and it could be 20 years away, I just cant shake the feeling that we are days away. is anyone else sensing this? And that its time to really focus, read the word, seek him, spend time in worship and prayer. and again, it could be something I ate, for goodness sake, but the only thing on my mind lately is his return, and a general sense that we are days -weeks-maybe months away? Anyone else?" ........... "Isn't it simply an AMAZING feeling thinking that literally any second we could hear the Trumpet, begin rising and be face to face with Jesus??? And yes, I too, believe that we are VERY, VERY CLOSE!!!"

Amazing. It'd be interesting to see how that particular omission persisted, since that's been a front-burner issue for years.

I'm not sure which response that you are referring to? With regards to the Chinese and Unions - I would agree that the primary reason why the state has maintained the ban is because they are concerned that they would represent a threat to their power. I am not as confident that this constituted the entire reason for the state implementing this "ban" by seizing control of existing unions and outlawing the formation of any others shortly after a revolution largely secured by workers and ostensibly dedicated to promoting their interests above all else. I think that another reason for this move is primarily economic in nature, since in a communist/socialist economy the costs associated with a strike, demands for higher compensation without increases in productivity, walkouts, or any other species of labor unrest are made plain, since they come right out of the state's coffers, rather than a private individual/corporation's profits. I think this is also the reason why you so often see strict statutory limits on awards for medical malpractice in states with single payer systems, but that's another topic. I can clearly understand why the leaders of communist/socialist states would decide that Unions were bad for the state, what's more difficult to understand why the membership of any particular union would think that replacing a market economy with communism/socialism would be good for them. The historical track record here should have been quite sobering by the early 50's, and why this plan remained appealing to anyone who identified both as a leftist and a friend of labor past this point is a mystery to me. To their credit, quite a few workers like Meany understood all of this quite clearly - and were amongst the most determined adversaries of communism. If I recall correctly he also had no small amount of contempt for leftist intellectuals that had no right to call themselves "workers," and wanted to lead the labor movement down that particular path. I don't think that there is "no place" for unions in a capitalist society. I do think that their approach to representing workers is largely misguided and self-defeating, that their efforts to secure above market compensation for their members via legislation that passes these additional costs onto consumers via subsidies, tarriffs, and laws that make certain employers off limits to non-union workers are harmful and wrongheaded. IMO unions would be much better off if they abandoned their efforts to prevent competition via rent-seeking and coercion, and instead focused on making themselves the most competitive participants in the labor marketplace. If unions were known for producing the most highly trained, efficient, reliable, and hard-working members of any trade, and actually made it a point to work with employers to help build the businesses that employ them - employers would be clamoring for union workers. The fact that they do just the opposite is telling. With regards to your political beliefs as they relate to this topic - I've run out of time, but perhaps another occasion will present itself...

I would LOVE to analyze something for you Jay. Was it your equation of unions to communism? Well, I think you're wrong to make that equation. But maybe I have a different definition than you have of what exactly a union is (or rather, what an optimal union is). KK pointed out that unions can exist outside of communism. Would you agree? Or are they ,in your eyes, little communist sleeper cells? "I would LOVE to analyze something for you Jay. Was it your equation of unions to communism? Well, I think you're wrong to make that equation." Since I've never equated the two, this is a curious statement. Why did the Communist party in China - and virtually every other communist state - outlaw unions? Conversely, why was George Meany* a strident anti-communist? *Help.

Engrish?

I'm actually really quite interested in your analysis of this phenomenon. Or Marylou's.

The quite visible hand of the communist party. Why would they have done such a thing? This was a revolution by, for, and of the workers.

And who outlawed them, pray-tell?

I hope Ming-Lee can forgive me for thinking that the exploitation of people is a bad thing. Do you want me to post some pictures of children working in sweatshops ? Maybe. But I doubt she'd forgive you of depriving her of the best means that she has available for providing for herself and her family other than the $2 sucky-sucky in the Shanghai alley.

Ming-Lee says: "When I can feed my family with your good intentions, give me a call."

Easy...it comes by transfering some of profit from the 1st world. In case you didn't know, many products you pay 10 dollars for only cost 1 dollar to make. So where is the other 9 dollars going Jay? One result of your proposal is that the jobs will stay here, which is just fine by me. But you will not be helping the folks you claim to care about. They'll be out of a job, and SOL. Exactly. I much prefer arguments for protectionism that are candid in this regard to those that attempt to pass it off as humanitarianism.

I'd also be interested in hearing how you generate sustained increases in real wages without real gains in productivity. If you could demonstrate that forming unions and attempting to charge a higher price for the same output is all that it takes to make the transition from penury to prosperity, this would be welcome news indeed.

I don't think that Kristoff's argument is that there is nothing that can be done to alleviate the misery and suffering in the poorest nations - but that promoting trade is the best means of actually doing so. In many of these nations, the only comparative advantage that they have is low labor costs, and absent these, they have little or nothing of value to exchange. Take the leading Asian country of your choice, roll the clock back by an arbitrary number of years, and the arguments that you are putting forth could have applied equally well to any of them. How is it that Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Korea, Japan, etc made the transition from poverty to prosperity in the space of ~40 years? Direct foreign aid? Activists in the first world looking out for them? My argument has been that the process of accumulating wealth, which started with them using their low labor costs to generate the profits which enabled them to make progressively increasing investments in machinery, capital equipment, education, infrastructure, etc - making incremental gains in real productivity and real wages until their standard of living was comparable to that of the developed world - and their labor costs were sufficiently high that they began outsourcing their low-skill manufacturing work elsewhere. The rise of unions in these countries was an effect, rather than a cause of their prosperity. I'd honestly be interested in learning how you account for the transition from sources of cheap labor to outsourcing cheap labor in any of the countries mentioned above.

So Kristof falls into the misguided camp here as well? I made plenty of arguments, which require no mindreading efforts on your part to address, which you are free to engage at your leisure if you wish to do so.

If that's the best that you can do, then by all means.

Thankfully for who? For consumers of their cheap plastic crap, so that Wallmart can stay afloat? Let face it, we here enjoy lower prices at the expense of others. Lets hope they don't figure that out! The moment they start demanding a quality of life equal to ours (maybe in the form of a union) we are screwed. So i guess its kill or be killed. Long live cheap plastic crap! In the case of "the government keeping the workers pay down" isn't starting a union akin to a democratic revolution? Would that not be a good thing? Are these governments just doing it because its profitable to keep the man down? Oh...it is our friend, the invisible hand. What would happen to the scores of millions of people who use the wages that they earn making the cheap plastic crap to provide themselves and their families with food, clothing, and shelter if no one bought it anymore? All that would happen is that we'd pay slightly more for a given set of goods until someone combined marginally lower labor costs with increased automation somewhere else and provided the same goods at a lower price, and they'd starve while some other country reaped the benefits of the trade and foreign direct investment that they relinquished. Don't look for the Chinese to chose door number two anytime soon. If I was concerned for anyone, I'd be concerned for the American or Euro who is convinced that the accident of his birth in a first world nation entitles him to a certain standard of living no matter what. Don't expect Ming-Li and Rahesh to cry any tears for Chet Guthrie because he can't parlay his high-school diploma into $80K a year with full bene's because they are working too hard over there. so you're saying lets go with the status quo because change is HARD and MESSY. and if we change it is will just screw up someone else's life. SOMEONE has to suffer, why change things. let the people who obviously enjoy suffering continue on. well thats a great attitude Jay. well, its not like our talking about it here is even going to make a scratch in anything. from my 1st world throne amid my plastic crap, why would i want to change anything. and you're right, they probably won't change anything. and unions are the root of all evil. and the invisible hand will care for all. conversation over. Was there ever a conversation to begin with? Sometimes it's reasonable to assume that the person that you are debating an issue with is doing so for less-than-honorable reasons, and if that's the assumption that you wish to make in my case you are free to do so, but how do you account for the fact that an individual like Nicholas Kristof advances the very same arguments? " Inviting All Democrats By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: January 14, 2004 I'd like to invite Richard Gephardt and the other Democratic candidates to come here to Cambodia and discuss trade policy with scavengers like Nhep Chanda, who spends her days rooting through filth in the city dump. One of the most unfortunate trends in the Democratic presidential race has been the way nearly all of the candidates, including Howard Dean, the front-runner, have been flirting with anti-trade positions by putting the emphasis on labor, environmental and human rights standards in international agreements. While Mr. Gephardt calls for an international minimum wage, Mr. Dean was quoted in USA Today in October as saying, ''I believe that trade also requires human rights and labor standards and environmental standards that are concurrent around the world.'' Perhaps the candidates are simply pandering to unions, or bashing President Bush. But my guess is that they sincerely believe that such trade policies would help poor people abroad -- and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve these schemes would be. Nhep Chanda is a 17-year-old girl who is one of hundreds of Cambodians who toil all day, every day, picking through the dump for plastic bags, metal cans and bits of food. The stench clogs the nostrils, and parts of the dump are burning, producing acrid smoke that blinds the eyes. The scavengers are chased by swarms of flies and biting insects, their hands are caked with filth, and those who are barefoot cut their feet on glass. Some are small children. Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory -- working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day -- is a dream. ''I'd like to work in a factory, but I don't have any ID card, and you need one to show that you're old enough,'' she said wistfully. (Since the candidates are unlikely to find the time to travel to the third world anytime soon, I put an audio slide show of the Cambodian realities on the Web for them at www.nytimes.com/kristof.) All the complaints about third world sweatshops are true and then some: factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia. ''I want to work in a factory, but I'm in poor health and always feel dizzy,'' said Lay Eng, a 23-year-old woman. And no wonder: she has been picking through the filth, seven days a week, for six years. She has never been to a doctor. Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired. Along the Bassac River, construction workers told me they wanted factory jobs because the work would be so much safer than clambering up scaffolding without safety harnesses. Some also said sweatshop jobs would be preferable because they would mean a lot less sweat. (Westerners call them ''sweatshops,'' but they offer one of the few third world jobs that doesn't involve constant sweat.) In Asia, moreover, the factories tend to hire mostly girls and young women with few other job opportunities. The result has been to begin to give girls and women some status and power, some hint of social equality, some alternative to the sex industry. Cambodia has a fair trade system and promotes itself as an enlightened garment producer. That's great. But if the U.S. tries to ban products from countries that don't meet international standards, jobs will be shifted from the most wretched areas to better-off nations like Malaysia or Mexico. Already there are very few factories in Africa or the poor countries of Asia, and if we raise the bar higher, there will be even fewer. That would hurt American consumers. But it would be particularly devastating for laborers in the poorest parts of the world. For the fundamental problem in the poor countries of Africa and Asia is not that sweatshops exploit too many workers; it's that they don't exploit enough." Link

Thankfully for who? For consumers of their cheap plastic crap, so that Wallmart can stay afloat? Let face it, we here enjoy lower prices at the expense of others. Lets hope they don't figure that out! The moment they start demanding a quality of life equal to ours (maybe in the form of a union) we are screwed. So i guess its kill or be killed. Long live cheap plastic crap! In the case of "the government keeping the workers pay down" isn't starting a union akin to a democratic revolution? Would that not be a good thing? Are these governments just doing it because its profitable to keep the man down? Oh...it is our friend, the invisible hand. What would happen to the scores of millions of people who use the wages that they earn making the cheap plastic crap to provide themselves and their families with food, clothing, and shelter if no one bought it anymore? All that would happen is that we'd pay slightly more for a given set of goods until someone combined marginally lower labor costs with increased automation somewhere else and provided the same goods at a lower price, and they'd starve while some other country reaped the benefits of the trade and foreign direct investment that they relinquished. Don't look for the Chinese to chose door number two anytime soon. If I was concerned for anyone, I'd be concerned for the American or Euro who is convinced that the accident of his birth in a first world nation entitles him to a certain standard of living no matter what. Don't expect Ming-Li and Rahesh to cry any tears for Chet Guthrie because he can't parlay his high-school diploma into $80K a year with full bene's because they are working too hard over there.

Matt: I think that SC's point was that you do an equal disservice when you exaggerate or mischaracterize the threats posed by a given administration for political gain. Were you saluting the Black-Helicopter/Patriot-Movement folks for their valuable contribution to the national political discourse when they were suggesting that Waco, Ruby-Ridge, etc were mere preludes to a Clinton orchestrated takeover by the UN/One-World-Government? Somewhere mixed in with the wild-eyed, crazy-ass gibberish were some points that may have been worth considering with regards to the power of the state under any administration, but they were completely lost amongst the aformentioned crazy-ass shit that no one in their right mind would actually give any credence to - and they wound up completely discrediting any argument that they were attempting to advance, and compromising any non-crazy-ass cause that they wished to further. Swap the Birkenstocks and beads for boots and bandoliers and I think you'd be surprised at how well you fit in with the folks in the fortified compounds.

The primary reason that they are poor is that they lived under governments which had nearly unlimited power to obstruct market forces for decades. The only way to make their pay go up in the long term is to increase the value of their output, which normally occurs when their employers invest the profits that their enterprises generate to invest in machinery or other capital equipment that increases the value of their output. At the same time the taxes that the employers paid on their profits typically allow the governments where they are operating to upgrade roads, bridges, railroads, ports, education, etc - all of which puts more capital at the worker's disposal and enables them to increase the value of their output still more. If you increase wages by a factor that exceeds the rate at which productivity increases, you eventually eliminate your profits - and the end result is that the workers lose their jobs, the employer never makes the investment in more capital equipment, the government never secures the funds necessary to upgrade the local infrastructure, and they remain mired in poverty. Thankfully, I think that most workers in the poorest parts of the world where they actually have the opportunity to work in such enterprises will understand that agitating for a temporary windfall won't help them much if it ultimately costs them their jobs, and will continue to choose working in factories because it appears to be the best option available to them at the time.

We don't need unions to preserve these laws any more than we need the Union Army to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

She does though, early on in the video. She speaks of Stalinist Soviet Union, then compares how this administration is using his play-book. And you know what? This is fucked up. It discredits LEGITIMATE complaints about executive priveledge, end-arounds by-passing constitutional constraints, etc., everything this administration is GUILTY OF. It reeks of the same FEAR-MONGERING that these people accuse this FUCKED UP administration of DOING. AND IT SUCKS. I understand the fear of this administration, I share it myself, but the discourse must remain contextually balanced and free of the same hype that this administration is accused of, or else we are in the same fucking pit. I'll count this as my "odd-bedfellow" moment of the day.

Why do you think that the people in those countries have agreed to work under those conditions? Or have they been forced to do so? Are you confident that people living in the first-world understand the realities that they are contending with better than they do, and that they should let people in the first world make these decisions for them?

Also - aren't there laws on the books that protect workers, and agencies tasked with enforcing them? If these are inadequate, I think that you can make a stronger case for changing the laws, providing them with more resources, etc if your goal is to protect all workers, rather than secure above-market compensation for a small subset of them.