On Nov 23, 6:55 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


Her family had owned a commercial wharf, which collected fees for dockage,
loading and so on. She brought it with her to the marriage. No, I can't
remember where I read it. It came up when I was studying early American
industry for writing my contributions to American Machinist's 100th
Anniversary issue. I was more interested in the foundry and the copper mill.
I read that in 1977. d8-)


I expect you remember correctly. I just could not find anything about
it. Articles on Paul Revere on the web are likely to stretch the
truth toward making Paul look good.

Given the historical evidence, Dan, you have a much higher hurdle to show
that productivity drove wages up than the other way around. In fact, that's
a major reason that unions got started in the first place. Productivity did
improve profitability and it created a bigger pool of profit from which to
draw, but that by itself did not drive wages up. It took coercive force to
squeeze it out of the owners.

The way I see it is that increased productivity increased profits.
And instead of being enlightend and increasing wages, the owners took
the short view and tried to keep all the increased profits. Did not
consider that labor would organize to get their share of the increased
profits. Owners now consider that to maximize profits, one needs to
let labor share in the profits. That motivates labor to produce more.
Could we have gotten to where we are now without unions? We probably
needed experiencing the unions in order to believe that sharing
profits ends up with everyone better off.



I find it curious that I'm catching it from both sides, from people who
dislike unions. Harold has been claiming that unions' "greed," and their
acquisition of unfairly high wages, are the cause of America's loss of
industry to underdeveloped countries. You're saying they had no little or no
effect on increasing wages. I'm having a hard time following both of you
guys around the block. Maybe you should be arguing with Harold. d8-)

I am not saying that unions did not have an effect on increasing
wages. But I am saying that their role was minor compared to all the
other things that were happening.

What would have happened without unions? No way to know. But if
unions were the only force, and there was no improved productivity, it
is obvious to me that wages would not have gone up.

Yeah, I know, you've said that. But you haven't reacted to my statement that
unions, in the early days, got their wage increases from the pool of profit.
That's what the fight was about in the beginning: who was going to benefit
from profitability. Unions wanted some of it, and they got it.


No reaction because I agree with that. But the bigger pool of profit
had to occur first. And was a bigger factor in creating the middle
class than the unions.


I see this as somewhat similar to taxes. There is an optimum rate of
taxation that produces the maximum revenue. Too high a rate and
revenue falls. Too low a rate and revenue falls.

In the same way there is an optimum percentage of profit that needs to
go to labor. Too high and there is not enough capital investment, so
fewer jobs, etc. Too low and there are no consumers for what is
produced.

Dan