On Nov 23, 1:06 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


Here's a key fact, sparky: Without unions, you'd be making a fraction of
what you're making now. The only thing that makes you worth what you make is
the fact that unions raised the bar for more than a half-century so you
could settle back and take advantage of what they did. Before unions, the
idea of any kind of worker making it into the middle class, which was made
up of professionals and merchants at the beginning of the last century, was
laughable.

It was the wages paid by union shops that made it possible for non-union
shops to pay you more, for two reasons. First, they set the competitive
standard for costs: all your employer(s) had to do was to shave a little bit
off of the union wage/load costs to be able to beat them in the marketplace.
Second, their wages established a floor, at some percentage under what they
were making, that your non-union employers had to pay in order to attract
workers.

Your entire working life has been parasitic upon unions. There isn't a
person here who works at a non-management job who isn't in the same boat.
And it isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of whether you know labor
and economic history or not.

--
Ed Huntress

Paul Revere seems like an example of someone whose family went from
worker to the middle class. His father was an apprentice. Paul was
a craftsman, but it seems to me that he was middle class. So if it is
laughable, laugh away.

And then someone I know said :



"True enough. If you're a real theorizer and if you can back 'way off
from
the real lives of real people, you can even see it as a good thing
that will
work out just fine in the end. Milton Friedman is one of those. Thomas
Friedman is, too.

But you still have to ask what has driven that trend upward. It isn't
simple, and you won't find many serious economists who ignore the long-
term
effects of unions. "

The fact is that we had the history we had, and there is no way to
prove or disprove what would have happened without unions. But the
Friedmans are pretty serious economists. The unions had an effect,
but I contend that the end result occurred because of other things as
improved productivity that meant that more people could consume more.
And that is what grew the middle class. I don't think that the unions
are a big force now because of all the other things, and as a
theorizer I can back way off. Anytime you throw in things about"real
lives of real people ", you are getting away from theory and going
toward emotions.

I can accept your opinions, but do not think they are facts. And I
certainly agree that Sparky is over the top. One can know what has
happened, but it is pretty much impossible to know how someones
character would have developed in diffferent circumstances.

Dan