threlayer
11-06-2009, 05:03 PM
UNIONS
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It is a serious question worthy of debate how beneficial unions are. They helped to wreck the auto industry with ridiculous work rules and by paying people NOT to build cars. That was after they helped to wreck the steel industry. In N.Y.C. the corruption in the ILA helped turn the nation's busiest port into a backwater. The ILGW and Amalgamated Clothing Workers ( both mobbed up ) wrecked 7th Avenue. The Carpenters ruined the Javits Center. Yes, organized crime found their way into unions. It also found its way into government, law enforcement, and corporations as well. So how is that different? Yes, some unions in some industries have developed enormous salaries compared to their productivity. Others are struggling. Much of the problem in the auto industry stems from corporate leaders not being smart and unresponsive to changing consumer trends. In a few industries unions make it difficult for corporations to change with the times. Union officials are not always the smartest leaders but they are the most influential, sort of like government elected officials.
Especially today, its obscene to see union officials making healthy six-figure salaries and holding conventions at the Fontainbleu when their membership is being laid off. It is folly to discuss what union officials make personally without comparing it to what obscene incomes huge financial corporation higher ups make (7, 8, 9 digits), even though they have run their corporations, as well as the country, into near bankruptcy; and their effect of peoples' lives and those effects passed onto the entire first world also must be compared. There would be no strong middle class to purchase corporate products without unions. Junkets to elaborate places have their places in most corporations and governments. Without the corporate businesses, well-heeled individuals would have no fancy places to drop their excess change into.
Unions today promote mediocrity. Show me the union shop where anyone has any incentive to work harder and longer. Unions also promote training and safety and to an extent promote fair treatment by unfair bosses. Unions often do affect flaxibility by outdated work rules.
Teacher's unions have wrecked public education. It's impossible to get rid of bad teachers and there are no incentives to try and be a good one. Not only the unions, but the NEA, Dept of Education, and our culture itself.
CORPORATIONS
Unlike most other industrialized countries we engage in double and even triple taxation. We tax corporations at the second highest rate in the world ( only Japan is higher ) and then we tax dividends and capital gains. Corporations do not pay taxes. They just collect them and then pass the cost along to consumers and workers. Double and triple taxation applies right down to the consumer. Well, part of this is just wrong. Our corporate taxes are high but the corporations have very great support by the government, for which they pay a lot. If corporations, per your hypothesis, only pass along taxes, then higher paid corporate employees also in turn pass along taxes by demanding higher salaries to compensate. As usual the consumer gets it in the END.
GOVERNMENT
I am pro middle-class. The biggest danger to its health and well being is GOVERNMENT. Government has screwed up the economy. Government has screwed up education. Government is taxing the middle class to death. Government is driving the middle class out of the cities and now its driving them out of entire states- California, N.Y. and N.J. just to name three. First, you may think you are espousing middle class values, but actually you are highly pro-corporate and anti-government with seemingly little regard for what makes middle class economics work. The biggest danger is elected government officials, with very lax ethics laws being bought and sold by huge corporations.
HISTORY
It's funny that you mention the 1890's. The ones who REALLY want to go back to those days are the sponsors of Cap & Tax. If passed and implemented it will mandate per capita carbon outputs BELOW 1890 levels. Off the point. How many other countries are already doing cap and trade? You are out of date.
GOVERNMENT AGAIN
More to the point, HOW were the major corporations able to be so exploitative during the Gilded Age and Gay 90's ? Government. Who sent in troops to break up strikes ? Who prosecuted union organizers ? Corporations pressured their cronies in the government to pony up forces to oppose unionization. Corruption was rampant. I know this to be the case for several industries; it is a well-documented fact.
...
It is a serious question worthy of debate how beneficial unions are. They helped to wreck the auto industry with ridiculous work rules and by paying people NOT to build cars. That was after they helped to wreck the steel industry. In N.Y.C. the corruption in the ILA helped turn the nation's busiest port into a backwater. The ILGW and Amalgamated Clothing Workers ( both mobbed up ) wrecked 7th Avenue. The Carpenters ruined the Javits Center. Yes, organized crime found their way into unions. It also found its way into government, law enforcement, and corporations as well. So how is that different? Yes, some unions in some industries have developed enormous salaries compared to their productivity. Others are struggling. Much of the problem in the auto industry stems from corporate leaders not being smart and unresponsive to changing consumer trends. In a few industries unions make it difficult for corporations to change with the times. Union officials are not always the smartest leaders but they are the most influential, sort of like government elected officials.
Especially today, its obscene to see union officials making healthy six-figure salaries and holding conventions at the Fontainbleu when their membership is being laid off. It is folly to discuss what union officials make personally without comparing it to what obscene incomes huge financial corporation higher ups make (7, 8, 9 digits), even though they have run their corporations, as well as the country, into near bankruptcy; and their effect of peoples' lives and those effects passed onto the entire first world also must be compared. There would be no strong middle class to purchase corporate products without unions. Junkets to elaborate places have their places in most corporations and governments. Without the corporate businesses, well-heeled individuals would have no fancy places to drop their excess change into.
Unions today promote mediocrity. Show me the union shop where anyone has any incentive to work harder and longer. Unions also promote training and safety and to an extent promote fair treatment by unfair bosses. Unions often do affect flaxibility by outdated work rules.
Teacher's unions have wrecked public education. It's impossible to get rid of bad teachers and there are no incentives to try and be a good one. Not only the unions, but the NEA, Dept of Education, and our culture itself.
CORPORATIONS
Unlike most other industrialized countries we engage in double and even triple taxation. We tax corporations at the second highest rate in the world ( only Japan is higher ) and then we tax dividends and capital gains. Corporations do not pay taxes. They just collect them and then pass the cost along to consumers and workers. Double and triple taxation applies right down to the consumer. Well, part of this is just wrong. Our corporate taxes are high but the corporations have very great support by the government, for which they pay a lot. If corporations, per your hypothesis, only pass along taxes, then higher paid corporate employees also in turn pass along taxes by demanding higher salaries to compensate. As usual the consumer gets it in the END.
GOVERNMENT
I am pro middle-class. The biggest danger to its health and well being is GOVERNMENT. Government has screwed up the economy. Government has screwed up education. Government is taxing the middle class to death. Government is driving the middle class out of the cities and now its driving them out of entire states- California, N.Y. and N.J. just to name three. First, you may think you are espousing middle class values, but actually you are highly pro-corporate and anti-government with seemingly little regard for what makes middle class economics work. The biggest danger is elected government officials, with very lax ethics laws being bought and sold by huge corporations.
HISTORY
It's funny that you mention the 1890's. The ones who REALLY want to go back to those days are the sponsors of Cap & Tax. If passed and implemented it will mandate per capita carbon outputs BELOW 1890 levels. Off the point. How many other countries are already doing cap and trade? You are out of date.
GOVERNMENT AGAIN
More to the point, HOW were the major corporations able to be so exploitative during the Gilded Age and Gay 90's ? Government. Who sent in troops to break up strikes ? Who prosecuted union organizers ? Corporations pressured their cronies in the government to pony up forces to oppose unionization. Corruption was rampant. I know this to be the case for several industries; it is a well-documented fact.