"Harold and Susan Vordos" wrote in message
et...

snip

I worked as a machinist/toolmaker for most of my productive life, and
realize, all too well, the degree of skill and experience that one must
have to be qualified for the job. These people are worth money, but
when they demand wages in keeping with what a well educated doctor used to
make, it's time to get a reality check. That, or lose their jobs, as it
turns out, is how it's shaking out. Who's fault is it?

Harold

Don't get too upset with them, Harold. It's because of them that you were
able to make a living. Unions pushed the whole scale up to new heights for
all people who work, except for white-collar workers, for nearly a century.
And probably for most white-collar workers, too, indirectly.

The trendline without them would have had you scratching for a living.
That's the way it was going before unions really caught hold and there
really is nothing in the historical record to suggest it would have changed.

Now, their work is mostly done, but not completely. I think of them as a
useful annoyance that tend to accelerate a lot of problems that were going
to hell anyway. They've been self-destructing in recent decades but what
they leave in their wake is an expectation that a good worker should be able
to live somewhere in the middle class. That wasn't the case early in the
last century.

--
Ed Huntress