Interesting F*ing rant:

[Hugh Conway]

Furthermore, they, the unionized workers, more than any other entity, brought safety to many very harsh working environments where before there was unregulated greed and injured, maimed or killed workers tossed aside like a used Kleenex. One side of my family comes from coal miners. I could go on this subject for quite sometime.

 

i think that's a reasonable assessment - and the record for "freemarket" safety innovations is, well, limited

[Fairweather]

If the benevolent hand of the marketplace was on shakey ground before the financial collapse that fairytale has been flushed, except for the true believers. It's quite like religion with its soothsayers on FOX spilling out the truths to the faithful, despite the facts - and easily attainable cause/effect processes.

 

That somehow a corporation, especially these days, is interested in anything but its stock price is pure fantasy...

 

And yet you recently boasted about how you were able to tell your boss to fuck off while you spent the better part of the summer in Bolivia? I smell denial--with a dash of hypocrisy.

[Fairweather]

 

Furthermore, they, the unionized workers, more than any other entity, brought safety to many very harsh working environments where before there was unregulated greed and injured, maimed or killed workers tossed aside like a used Kleenex. One side of my family comes from coal miners. I could go on this subject for quite sometime.

 

 

...and then they got greedy and drove their employers across the Pacific.

[JayB]

I think through some sophistry you introduced some things to the discussion which were not there Jay. Who said Unions increase efficiency? We can spread out the credit to lots of places, and although a case might be made that the Unions helped in a minor way to achieve increased production, they are small in comparison to increased mechanization, industrialization, and capitol/resource exploitation and investment.

 

What the unions did was spread the wealth, like Moore says here: "Working people didn't get to send their kids to college, few were able to own their own fucking home, nobody could take a fucking day off for a funeral or a sick day or they might lose their fucking job." Furthermore, they, the unionized workers, more than any other entity, brought safety to many very harsh working environments where before there was unregulated greed and injured, maimed or killed workers tossed aside like a used Kleenex. One side of my family comes from coal miners. I could go on this subject for quite sometime.

 

So - is the claim here that:

 

1) Unions are actually responsible for creating all of the scientific, technological, financial, and other knowledge and innovations that made it possible to make commodities, food, etc ("wealth") more efficiently?

 

No, that was introduced by you, we are on another subject altogether.

 

Warm regards sir!

 

 

What caught my eye when I was scrolling through the thread was Off's claims about unions and the wealth necessary to generate and sustain a middle class. Since I'm one of the rare and unpopular folks that's of the opinion that they were more of a weakly correlated effect of far more complicated dynamics that gave rise to prosperity than a cause of it, I'm interested in how people who believe that story understand it. Sounds like we mostly agree on what their relationship to rising prosperity.

 

I also think that the evolution of workplace safety is far more complicated than you suggest, but even taken at face value it's not clear that any role that they may have played in making industrial workplaces safer means that they're still necessary for that purpose or a cost effective means of achieving it. There's no doubt that the Union Army was responsible for ending slavery, but that wouldn't be a good argument for maintaining it indefinitely to protect society against a reversion to slavery.

 

With regards to workplace safety back in the old days, I think it's worth remembering what percentage of the labor force was actually working in industrial and/or unionized settings, and what the actual incidence of deaths and injuries was in the era that we're remembering. There was far more danger everywhere - I'm not sure that working in a coal-mine in the late nineteenth century was significantly more likely to kill you than giving birth, heading out to sea to fish, etc - and even working in a small non-industrial shop as a blacksmith, etc wasn't without significant hazards. Life in general, and just earning a living was just way more hazardous for everyone back then, and there's an awful lot of factors outside of industrial unions that have made it far less so.

 

I'm happy to give unions whatever credit they deserve here, but whatever it is I don't think it's sufficient for making everyone else pay to exempt them from the forces of competition and change that everyone else in society has to deal with, much less trying to eliminate competition and change under the mistaken idea that doing so is the recipe for increasing general prosperity.

[Jim]

If the benevolent hand of the marketplace was on shakey ground before the financial collapse that fairytale has been flushed, except for the true believers. It's quite like religion with its soothsayers on FOX spilling out the truths to the faithful, despite the facts - and easily attainable cause/effect processes.

 

That somehow a corporation, especially these days, is interested in anything but its stock price is pure fantasy...

 

And yet you recently boasted about how you were able to tell your boss to fuck off while you spent the better part of the summer in Bolivia? I smell denial--with a dash of hypocrisy.

 

Sticking to the facts as well as Fox news I see. I would have gladly subjected myself to the whims of the marketplace if my employer said they couldn't afford to let me go. Would have been my choice. But I'm in a profession and decently educated. I see a big difference between professional jobs and trade jobs.

 

How this morphs in your tweaky head to an argument for a non-regulatory utopia is part of the continued mystery you show us every day. Amazing really.

[JayB]

A virtual bull-session that doesn't leave your host so pissed off that there not only cutting through the steak but deep into the cutting board beneath it is a fantastic innovation.

indeed, though sadly the virtual form of political conversation makes it harder to seduce and hate-fuck your female opponents at the end of the evening when the booze is all drunk...

 

i have great faith in yer intellect jay - yer clearly well-read and have no problem puttin a bunch of facts together into a well reason-agrument - i have no faith however in The Boss taking good care of me so long as i keep quiet

 

 

I think that's a reasonable philosophy, but more so if it's applied to every boss in the picture.

 

I just got back from a kayaking trip in Western upstate New York, and got another visual trip through past a parade of ghost-factories that permeate much of the rust-belt and New England these days.

 

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity? Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

Unionized workers that are part of a government monopoly are insulated from these forces to a certain extent, but given the nature of the math at play I can't help but wonder if there's not going to be a significant number of workers that wish their bosses had made flexibility and efficiency part of the playbook.

[Jim]

 

I think that's a reasonable philosophy, but more so if it's applied to every boss in the picture.

 

I just got back from a kayaking trip in Western upstate New York, and got another visual trip through past a parade of ghost-factories that permeate much of the rust-belt and New England these days.

 

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity? Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

Unionized workers that are part of a government monopoly are insulated from these forces to a certain extent, but given the nature of the math at play I can't help but wonder if there's not going to be a significant number of workers that wish their bosses had made flexibility and efficiency part of the playbook.

 

.....as you were saying.....

 

Just so you know, I'm not *totally* against confusing correlation and causation when it suits my purposes.

[Hugh Conway]

I just got back from a kayaking trip in Western upstate New York, and got another visual trip through past a parade of ghost-factories that permeate much of the rust-belt and New England these days.

 

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity? Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

Never was a union shop; paid workers well; shifted everything off to China too. I realize you were looking for a driveby here but a history of the labor movement and upstate New York might raise your eye brows and challenge your convictions (likely unsuccesfully)

 

Don't fret though JayB - the non-unionized lawyers and non-unionized accountants are coming next because despite economic blather, they don't do much unique either. Hopefully the McKinsey cartel of morons is next

[Hugh Conway]

Oh, and you want one of the biggest reasons they shipped everything to China from Upstate? Here ya go:

http://www.epa.gov/region2/cleanup/sites/nytoc_sitename.htm

GE doesn't have to do things like this is China:

http://www.epa.gov/hudson/

Instead they pay a fat bribe to a couple hundred ministers and do what they want.

 

Things are not currently happening in the world because of inherent economic laws - despite the morally bankrupt and technically wrong babble from the Friedmanites - but because we've structured the world so it can function that way.

[JayB]

I just got back from a kayaking trip in Western upstate New York, and got another visual trip through past a parade of ghost-factories that permeate much of the rust-belt and New England these days.

 

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity? Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

Never was a union shop; paid workers well; shifted everything off to China too.

 

Don't fret though JayB - the non-unionized lawyers and non-unionized accountants are coming next because despite economic blather, they don't do much unique either. Hopefully the McKinsey cartel of morons is next

 

Yes.

 

The clear implication here is that the company and all of its employees would be much better off if the company *had* been fully unionized.

 

 

[Fairweather]

If the benevolent hand of the marketplace was on shakey ground before the financial collapse that fairytale has been flushed, except for the true believers. It's quite like religion with its soothsayers on FOX spilling out the truths to the faithful, despite the facts - and easily attainable cause/effect processes.

 

That somehow a corporation, especially these days, is interested in anything but its stock price is pure fantasy...

 

And yet you recently boasted about how you were able to tell your boss to fuck off while you spent the better part of the summer in Bolivia? I smell denial--with a dash of hypocrisy.

 

Sticking to the facts as well as Fox news I see. I would have gladly subjected myself to the whims of the marketplace if my employer said they couldn't afford to let me go. Would have been my choice. But I'm in a profession and decently educated. I see a big difference between professional jobs and trade jobs.

 

How this morphs in your tweaky head to an argument for a non-regulatory utopia is part of the continued mystery you show us every day. Amazing really.

 

You proposed that corporations are interested only in their share price, yet your sabbatical represents exhibit A to the contrary. Thanks again for making my point.

[JayB]

Oh, and you want one of the biggest reasons they shipped everything to China from Upstate? Here ya go:

http://www.epa.gov/region2/cleanup/sites/nytoc_sitename.htm

GE doesn't have to do things like this is China:

http://www.epa.gov/hudson/

Instead they bay a fat bribe to a couple hundred ministers and do what they want.

 

Should be easy to reverse, then. Just suspend the said laws and every industrial enterprise in the globe will be racing to set up operations in New York, Ohio, Michigan, etc! Someone tell the unions and their representatives in the state legislatures the good news! The days of $65/hour in total comp for turning a wrench on the assembly line are back!

[Fairweather]

I saw no one slouching in the factories where my Dad worked - and all they wanted was a fare wage, decent medical benifits for their family, and a few weeks off to do house repairs and sit in back yard with a beer and chat with their neighbors.

 

f a i r

 

b e n e f i t s

 

I'm in a profession and decently educated.

 

Um, if you say so.

[Hugh Conway]

I just got back from a kayaking trip in Western upstate New York, and got another visual trip through past a parade of ghost-factories that permeate much of the rust-belt and New England these days.

 

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity? Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

Never was a union shop; paid workers well; shifted everything off to China too.

 

Don't fret though JayB - the non-unionized lawyers and non-unionized accountants are coming next because despite economic blather, they don't do much unique either. Hopefully the McKinsey cartel of morons is next

 

Yes.

 

The clear implication here is that the company and all of its employees would be much better off if the company *had* been fully unionized.

 

Of course it's crystal clear. variable Z in my model. You believe economic models, don't you? Infalliable they are.

 

 

Should be easy to reverse, then. Just suspend the said laws and every industrial enterprise in the globe will be racing to set up operations in New York, Ohio, Michigan, etc!

 

yeah, I'm sure businesses will run to develop on the empty brownfields.

 

you'd like my cousin. he gets $200k a year to play golf, whore, kissass and update a spreadsheet. benefits of the freemarket and all. nobody else could do his job or is as qualified as him (BA from a landgrant)

 

Now those fat salaried jobs are a sound foundation for the future of america. like the overpaid biotech people, lawyers, accountants, all the other dumb lazy fucks out there.

[JayB]

I share Hayek's opinions about the value of economic models, particluarly the one that stipulates that Y = C + I + G.

 

Evidently most policymakers feel otherwise, and have for quite some time.

[Hugh Conway]

I share Hayek's opinions about the value of economic models, particluarly the one that stipulates that Y = C + I + G.

 

Evidently most policymakers feel otherwise, and have for quite some time.

 

To their credit policymakers are more interested in practicality than dogma and religion, which, without modelling, is what Economics mostly is. Some nuggets of wisdom there, quite a lot of feces.

[j_b]

Another exercise in manicheism and non-sequitur from JayB. Of course unions weren't solely responsible for providing impetus to the evolution of industry, but it is clear that without workers organizing, JayB's ideological brethens (the likes of the Koch brothers) would have behaved like robber barons for the entire 20th century instead of for half of it and very few people would have raised their economic status to that of the middle class.

[billcoe]

I just got back from a kayaking trip in Western upstate New York, and got another visual trip through past a parade of ghost-factories that permeate much of the rust-belt and New England these days.

 

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity? Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

Unionized workers that are part of a government monopoly are insulated from these forces to a certain extent, but given the nature of the math at play I can't help but wonder if there's not going to be a significant number of workers that wish their bosses had made flexibility and efficiency part of the playbook.

 

As far as empty old stale industries in old New York, I'll see Hugh Jardons New York Kodak,and I'll raise you a NON-unionized . Never were unionized....samesame market forces at work, nothing to do with Unions. They gave up reporting the employment figures, which for so many years they were so proud off. http://www.thestreet.com/story/10706503/ibm-stops-reporting-us-employment-numbers.html Interesting that they all thought that at the time significant number of workers assumed that they AND their bosses had made "flexibility and efficiency part of the playbook." Perhaps it's hard to compete with a $3.00 a day Chinese worker though, staying as you say: flexible and efficient. Maybe if they were working for $3.00 a day.

 

BTW, I basically agree with your earlier response to me, however, I'm checking out of this conversation as due to the complexity and many fine nuances: this kind of discourse, by necessity, means that we skip much of what is true, interesting and meaningful: and argue points which the others have already taken for granted but chosen not to type out in full. That and I have a glass of wine and a good book:-)

 

Hasta bros! BTW, I value your opinion more than Moores, but you both have some holes in your thinking.... perhaps due to background. ie http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-OldWomanIllusion.html blah blah blah I'm not going for disertation that's all I got, figure it out.

 

Take care!

[j_b]

What caught my eye when I was scrolling through the thread was Off's claims about unions and the wealth necessary to generate and sustain a middle class. Since I'm one of the rare and unpopular folks that's of the opinion that they were more of a weakly correlated effect of far more complicated dynamics that gave rise to prosperity than a cause of it,

 

Who could seriously claim that on average organizing is a result of welfare than the opposite? You are a denialist of labor history.

 

 

I also think that the evolution of workplace safety is far more complicated than you suggest, but even taken at face value it's not clear that any role that they may have played in making industrial workplaces safer means that they're still necessary for that purpose or a cost effective means of achieving it.

 

laughable. As if your ideological brethens (the Koch brothers) worried about workplace safety, little less optimizing its cost.

 

With regards to workplace safety back in the old days, I think it's worth remembering what percentage of the labor force was actually working in industrial and/or unionized settings, and what the actual incidence of deaths and injuries was in the era that we're remembering. There was far more danger everywhere - I'm not sure that working in a coal-mine in the late nineteenth century was significantly more likely to kill you than giving birth, heading out to sea to fish, etc - and even working in a small non-industrial shop as a blacksmith, etc wasn't without significant hazards. Life in general, and just earning a living was just way more hazardous for everyone back then, and there's an awful lot of factors outside of industrial unions that have made it far less so.

 

there are other social organisations responsible fotr it but they result from organizing against your ideological brethrens, the likes of the Koch brothers.

 

I'm happy to give unions whatever credit they deserve here,

 

I am going to vomit now. When did JayB gave credit to unions for the 8-hour day (what's left of it thanks to JayB's ideological brethens)?, or vacations (what's left of it thanks to JayB's ideological brethens)? or no-child labot (what's left ..), or benefits, etc, etc,

[j_b]

Did their union bosses and their political representatives represent them well when they drove their compensation above the value of their marginal productivity?

 

their marginal productivity compared to that of developing nations' workers earning $2/day? You must be joking. They couldn't survive on $2/day.

 

Might have been a viable strategy at some point in the past, but I can't help but think that there was more than one set of bosses that failed those workers back there.

 

more like you haven't got a clue.

[Hugh Conway]

As far as empty old stale industries in old New York, I'll see Hugh Jardons New York Kodak,and I'll raise you a NON-unionized . Never were unionized....samesame market forces at work, nothing to do with Unions. They gave up reporting the employment figures, which for so many years they were so proud off. http://www.thestreet.com/story/10706503/ibm-stops-reporting-us-employment-numbers.html Interesting that they all thought that at the time significant number of workers assumed that they AND their bosses had made "flexibility and efficiency part of the playbook."

 

Hasta bros! BTW, I value your opinion more than Moores, but you both have some holes in your thinking.... perhaps due to background. ie http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-OldWomanIllusion.html blah blah blah I'm not going for disertation that's all I got, figure it out.

 

Take care!

 

Ahhh IBM - still hiring American University trained workers; they just aren't American citizens so hey get a taxpayer subsidized education and never really put a dime into the system. Yay!

 

 

It's more the old saying "He who is warm can't understand what it feels like to be cold"

[Fairweather]

Ahhh IBM - still hiring American University trained workers; they just aren't American citizens so hey get a taxpayer subsidized education and never really put a dime into the system. Yay!

 

 

 

Hey, check it out: Xenophobia on the left looks just like xenophobia on the right!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Ahhh IBM - still hiring American University trained workers; they just aren't American citizens so hey get a taxpayer subsidized education and never really put a dime into the system. Yay!

 

 

 

Hey, check it out: Xenophobia on the left looks just like xenophobia on the right!

 

It's for "illustrative" purposes, just like Prole's N-bombs.

[Fairweather]

I'd hate to hear what they say in private. Pretty ugly, no doubt.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I'd hate to hear what they say in private. Pretty ugly, no doubt.

 

Commies are about as racist as they come, not to mention anti-semites. No surprises here.