American Unions -- Good or Bad for America?

[syrenn]

I'm sure the walmart greeters are grateful as shit for your business. So are the Chinese. Piss on you and anyone that shops there. I never have and never will.

I hope that little bit of money you save is worth it for those of you that don't care about your community. You should all be sporting Chinese flags on your porches so your neighbors know what traitors you really are.

So here in lays the conundrum of unions being good or bad. If unions had not priced US labor out of the markets, US manufacturing would not have left and gone overseas. If the US could produce product comparable to overseas manufacturing in terms of price there would not be this problem.

Why cant we? Because of unions interference with business.

 

[HUGGY]

Well said, Code. The mom and pop stores are still out there, but only when they adjust to the current and find a way to offer products and services that the big box stores cannot. We still go to the mom & pop computer repair shop down the street for custom built coputers, repairs, upgrades, advice, and counsel that Best Buy or Circuit City simply aren't equipped to provide. But the mom & pop store is foolish to attempt to compete with the big stores in products the big stores are equipped to provide.

And in our stressed out, time conscious, and highly mobile lifestyles these days, people aren't as willing to spend hours either shopping or waiting on stuff to be ordered as they once were. So the mom & pop retail stores do need one or more big anchor stores that pull large numbers of people into an area. That way if one place doesn't have an item, there is likely another store in the same complex that does. Such merchants are also fully aware of what their neighbors are selling too, and intentionally compliment that. There is a reason restaurants tend to sort of clump together any more. Most get a lot more customers that way. There is a reason auto dealers are found mostly in one area of the city. They get a lot more lookers and prospective buyers that way.

To expect nothing to change, to demonize those who have found ways to make it work in an increasingly tough market, is to think we still need as many fabric stores even though few people now take the time to make their own clothes. It is to think we still need wagon wheel and buggy whip factories or pay phones on every corner.

Times do change. Sometimes we don't like it, but we might as well accept it. And I for one appreciate a Wal-mart or Lowes or Sears or whatever big grocery store chain where I am fairly sure I'll find the item I'm needing at the moment. That doesn't make them evil in any sense of the word. It is just the way it is.

I'm sure the walmart greeters are grateful as shit for your business. So are the Chinese. Piss on you and anyone that shops there. I never have and never will.

I hope that little bit of money you save is worth it for those of you that don't care about your community. You should all be sporting Chinese flags on your porches so your neighbors know what traitors you really are.

Aw Huggy, you're so sweet.

Maybe I made your list now?

Sure..good call. I like it when people turn themselves in and save me the trouble. Thanks.



I've decided to reward your coming forward with the opportunity to make up your own nickname.

Am I generous beyond all expectation? Well....duh!

Pleezzz submit your nic over at "The List" and we'll give you a fine studio all your own!

 

[Foxfyre]

I've been wondering. If the unions didn't force wages above the prevailing wage for the area and weren't forcing benefits, retirement packages etc. above what the average area workers expect, would we be manufacturing more stuff here and buying a lot less from China?

 

[antagon]

And if WalMart did not employ them... ?

If a community will buy the stuff sold at a Walmart, then they presumably were buying it from small businesses before Walmart showed up. Those small businesses were employers who no longer exist, have been driven under by Walmart's illegal predatory pricing policies. It's a perfect storm, economically. Destroy the community's business sector, lower the average wage and trap people into buying as cheaply as possible because they earn so much less.

Ever heard the term "company store"?

Interesting perspective. How far back in time would we need to go in terms of commerce for you to be happy? Local bakeries were replaced by larger bakeries. The milkman used to own a cow or two and sold the milk in the village. Woolworths replaced many local neighborhood stores. That was in the early 20th Century. Sears, JC Penney and Wards were all supplanters of the local guy.

Lowes and Home Depot overwhelmed ACE which previously had overwhelmed other non affiliated hardware outlets.

Do you recomend that the extensive selection, low pricing, convenient hours and central locations which take advantage of the automobile culture be simply swept away in favor of the limited selection, limited hours, limited access and limited floor space of the outdated General Stores of years past?

Should we also close restaurants that have more than one location? How about gas stations? Department stores? Malls? Hospitals? How limited are you demanding that our selection become for you to be happy?

One last thing. Look at any WalMart. Check the surrounding small businesses that have a niche clientel. Every WalMart has a shelf life of 10 years at which point it simply closes and reopens in a different spot nearby. What happens to those Niche marketers. They close. Without WalMart's draw, they have no traffic, business and no purpose to stay open.

How do you feel about internet marketers? Should this be illegal in your world of yesterday? How about the Sears catalogue?

You can spend your life fighting the current or find out where the flow is going and use for your benefit.

alas, small businesses are trending back against larger firms, anyhow. nothing big companies and big labor can do about it.

 

[antagon]

I've been wondering. If the unions didn't force wages above the prevailing wage for the area and weren't forcing benefits, retirement packages etc. above what the average area workers expect, would we be manufacturing more stuff here and buying a lot less from China?

i believe we would have a larger manufacture base, but only marginally so. we still output more goods than china, however, because of a number of factors in our economy and our massive consumption of goods, we have a major trade deficit with them, notwithstanding. looking at this from a domestic perspective alone also leaves out the relationships sought with china as a trading partner, and what advantages they have over us as a trinket-exporter. most union labor is not in the trinket game, in fact, not in manufacturing at all anymore. they've long priced themselves out of all but a few manufacturing sectors like auto and aerospace... i see them as dragging these remaining industries out of play on the international field.

 

[Foxfyre]

If a community will buy the stuff sold at a Walmart, then they presumably were buying it from small businesses before Walmart showed up. Those small businesses were employers who no longer exist, have been driven under by Walmart's illegal predatory pricing policies. It's a perfect storm, economically. Destroy the community's business sector, lower the average wage and trap people into buying as cheaply as possible because they earn so much less.

Ever heard the term "company store"?

Interesting perspective. How far back in time would we need to go in terms of commerce for you to be happy? Local bakeries were replaced by larger bakeries. The milkman used to own a cow or two and sold the milk in the village. Woolworths replaced many local neighborhood stores. That was in the early 20th Century. Sears, JC Penney and Wards were all supplanters of the local guy.

Lowes and Home Depot overwhelmed ACE which previously had overwhelmed other non affiliated hardware outlets.

Do you recomend that the extensive selection, low pricing, convenient hours and central locations which take advantage of the automobile culture be simply swept away in favor of the limited selection, limited hours, limited access and limited floor space of the outdated General Stores of years past?

Should we also close restaurants that have more than one location? How about gas stations? Department stores? Malls? Hospitals? How limited are you demanding that our selection become for you to be happy?

One last thing. Look at any WalMart. Check the surrounding small businesses that have a niche clientel. Every WalMart has a shelf life of 10 years at which point it simply closes and reopens in a different spot nearby. What happens to those Niche marketers. They close. Without WalMart's draw, they have no traffic, business and no purpose to stay open.

How do you feel about internet marketers? Should this be illegal in your world of yesterday? How about the Sears catalogue?

You can spend your life fighting the current or find out where the flow is going and use for your benefit.

alas, small businesses are trending back against larger firms, anyhow. nothing big companies and big labor can do about it.

They always have. For every big box store in the Albuquerque area there are probably 50 or more smaller businesses doing business out there. The ones who survive are the ones offering products and services that the big box stores don't. And all, including the big box stores, have to adjust and reorganize to satisfy the changing needs and tastes of their customers. A big box store screws that up now and then and goes belly up as do some of the smaller businesses do now and then, but most are finding ways to prosper.

Just recently the Target stores decided the only way to compete with Wal-mart was to open a grocery line and they are doing that. And yet the super markets are thriving quite nicely just the same.

Nothing stays the same. We might not like all the changes in our institutions, in our neighborhoods, in our culture as it adjusts to each new generation, but change is inevitable. Those who survive adjust to it.

Even the venerable railroad industry almost did itself in by failing to realize that it was not in the railroad business but was in the transportation business. It woke up after it stubbornly insisted on business as usual as a railroad and lost a huge market share to the trucking industry, bus lines, airlines, etc. It readjusted and started meeting transportation needs and started making a profit again though differently than it did before.

And that is the biggest problem with the unions. Too many have forgotten that they are not in the union business but are rather in the advocacy business. As a result they have been driving themselves right into the ground for some time now.

 

[FA_Q2]

I find it funny that the left defends things like welfare and the multitude of social programs that exist to help the poor and then those same people characterize it as corporate welfare. Pick a side fellas.

"Corporate welfare" means such things as triple tax discounts and gifts of government money to Big Pharma, or price supports to Big Agriculture. The term never, ever means any sort of assistance for people, poor or otherwise.

Unless you count the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Kennedys, etc. as "the people". I don't.

And THAT was the point. bfgrn was making the argument that it was corporate welfare and I was attempting to show how dishonest that was.

 

[Foxfyre]

"Corporate welfare" has many sides. It can be as simple as farm subsidies to encourage production of a product the people need to government contracts to defense firms for products the military needs or policy/regulation that benefits a particular industry/enterprise/group without putting any others at a disadvantage.

All of these things can be perfectly legitimate and are in no way improper when administered impartially and at the expense of no other industry/enterprise/group.

It becomes 'corporate welfare' and counterproductive--at least in the eyes of some of us--when the subsidy or benefit or regulation is provided in cases where the product or service is not needed and/or would be produced in the private sector without the subsidy. The purpose is to pay off favors as agreed or to generate favor for the politicians extending it. And it is absolutely evil. And absolutely wrong.

 

[plumberbaltimor]

Union membership in the privates sector has been declining for decades in the US and wages have been stagnating and not keeping up with productivity increases. At the same time the compensation of top executives have increased from 5 to 10 percent of the profits. This may or may not be due to the decline in union membership and power to effect policy, but it is reasonable to consider the possibility that unions were good for all worker, not just good for their members. Also when there are union jobs in a community, all employers must treat workers better to retain their employees.

Germany has a much higher percentage of union members than the US.

 

[midcan5]

Unions are like all breaks on power and control, both positive and negative but necessary. Anyone who has worked in life in a variety of jobs and positions would see this, but unfortunately like all things of life, perspectives are too often narrow and biased.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/50913-american-unions.html

"Corporate propaganda directed outwards, that is, to the public at large, has two main objectives: to identify the free enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions (the only agencies capable of checking a complete domination of society by corporations) with tyranny, oppression and even subversion. The techniques used to achieve these results are variously called 'public relations', 'corporate communications' and 'economic education'." Alex Carey 'Taking the Risk out of Democracy' [see also Democracy after Citizens United | MIT World ]

 

[editec]

I'm sure the walmart greeters are grateful as shit for your business. So are the Chinese. Piss on you and anyone that shops there. I never have and never will.

I hope that little bit of money you save is worth it for those of you that don't care about your community. You should all be sporting Chinese flags on your porches so your neighbors know what traitors you really are.

So here in lays the conundrum of unions being good or bad. If unions had not priced US labor out of the markets, US manufacturing would not have left and gone overseas. If the US could produce product comparable to overseas manufacturing in terms of price there would not be this problem.

Why cant we? Because of unions interference with business.

Nonsense.

The thing that created US industry and US wealth was protective tariffs.

The moment that FREE TRADE became the law of the land, that formula for national wealth changed.

And now after over 40 years of this stupid policy America is going broke.

Wake up and smell the inevitability of that fact of macro-economics, lad.

 

[editec]

Whatever perceived good unions have produced in no way justifies the evil they committed during their inception.

The same could be said of the reactionary response of the corporations which murdered far more people than the unionists EVER did.

Doubt that?

Read a book.

 

[George Costanza]

All together . . .

Conservatives: NO!
Liberals: YES!

This liberal thinks that, many times, unions are "bad for America," but, on the whole, what would happen without them is FAR worse than what happens with them now.

Let's face it - both sides of that equation (unions v. management) represent the same, basic human instinct: GREED.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Unions are like all breaks on power and control, both positive and negative but necessary. Anyone who has worked in life in a variety of jobs and positions would see this, but unfortunately like all things of life, perspectives are too often narrow and biased.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/economy/50913-american-unions.html

"Corporate propaganda directed outwards, that is, to the public at large, has two main objectives: to identify the free enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions (the only agencies capable of checking a complete domination of society by corporations) with tyranny, oppression and even subversion. The techniques used to achieve these results are variously called 'public relations', 'corporate communications' and 'economic education'." Alex Carey 'Taking the Risk out of Democracy' [see also Democracy after Citizens United | MIT World ]

How are unions, which are extremely powerful politically, a brake on power? Unions have always worked in concert with corporations to guarantee that the wrong people do not get work. The civil rights laws forced unions and corporations to stop discriminating based on race, and union membership fell off as a result.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

All together . . .

Conservatives: NO!
Liberals: YES!

This liberal thinks that, many times, unions are "bad for America," but, on the whole, what would happen without them is FAR worse than what happens with them now.

Let's face it - both sides of that equation (unions v. management) represent the same, basic human instinct: GREED.

Unions serve a purpose even in this day and age. That does not mean that people should just accept them at face value just because they do some good, anymore than they should accept corporations or government at face value just because they do some good.

 

[nraforlife]

America would be a better place without corporate 'persons' of any sort- business, labor or charitable.

However as long as business (capital) is allowed to organise as corporate 'persons' Labor(private) must have the same option.

 

[Bfgrn]

I've been wondering. If the unions didn't force wages above the prevailing wage for the area and weren't forcing benefits, retirement packages etc. above what the average area workers expect, would we be manufacturing more stuff here and buying a lot less from China?

 

[Big Fitz]

I've been wondering. If the unions didn't force wages above the prevailing wage for the area and weren't forcing benefits, retirement packages etc. above what the average area workers expect, would we be manufacturing more stuff here and buying a lot less from China?

Thank you for proving that they are 100 years behind us in being a modern culture with an appropriate western standard of living in many/most places.

I've never claimed once there isn't a place for unions, reforms, and even environmental protection... TO SOME DEGREE. Remember my oft used (and ignored) guardrail analogy. But I don't agree the road should be a single lane path versus a wide superhighway with appropriate traffic markings to make sure nobody harms one another and we all get to where we are wanting to go in life quickly and safely.

BTW, if a union movement like what occurred in the early 1900's happened in China, what's the over and under on the mass execution schedules? How fast will their version of Homestead and the Colorado Coal Miner's Strike occur? Are they going to appreciate Fabian 'western social progress' interfering in their nation?

That'll be a mess. But once again, you're trying to compare Apples to Lychees.

 

[Bfgrn]

I've been wondering. If the unions didn't force wages above the prevailing wage for the area and weren't forcing benefits, retirement packages etc. above what the average area workers expect, would we be manufacturing more stuff here and buying a lot less from China?

Thank you for proving that they are 100 years behind us in being a modern culture with an appropriate western standard of living in many/most places.

I've never claimed once there isn't a place for unions, reforms, and even environmental protection... TO SOME DEGREE. Remember my oft used (and ignored) guardrail analogy. But I don't agree the road should be a single lane path versus a wide superhighway with appropriate traffic markings to make sure nobody harms one another and we all get to where we are wanting to go in life quickly and safely.

BTW, if a union movement like what occurred in the early 1900's happened in China, what's the over and under on the mass execution schedules? How fast will their version of Homestead and the Colorado Coal Miner's Strike occur? Are they going to appreciate Fabian 'western social progress' interfering in their nation?

That'll be a mess. But once again, you're trying to compare Apples to Lychees.

Do you view yourself as some self proclaimed philosopher Big Fizzzz? Maybe no one pays attention to you because you are a dolt?

You're the guy who believes when the state executes an innocent human being, it is not murder, because executions are merely punishment for a crime. I mean, a crime was committed, so someone has to pay. What difference does it make if the person executed actually committed the crime.

You are the guy who dismisses the fact that 5% of the humans beings on this planet reside in America and 25% of the humans beings being imprisoned reside in the same America.

Clearly a tack hammer to middle of your forehead would be dangerous to the hammer.

 

[Big Fitz]

Thank you for proving that they are 100 years behind us in being a modern culture with an appropriate western standard of living in many/most places.

I've never claimed once there isn't a place for unions, reforms, and even environmental protection... TO SOME DEGREE. Remember my oft used (and ignored) guardrail analogy. But I don't agree the road should be a single lane path versus a wide superhighway with appropriate traffic markings to make sure nobody harms one another and we all get to where we are wanting to go in life quickly and safely.

BTW, if a union movement like what occurred in the early 1900's happened in China, what's the over and under on the mass execution schedules? How fast will their version of Homestead and the Colorado Coal Miner's Strike occur? Are they going to appreciate Fabian 'western social progress' interfering in their nation?

That'll be a mess. But once again, you're trying to compare Apples to Lychees.

Do you view yourself as some self proclaimed philosopher Big Fizzzz? Maybe no one pays attention to you because you are a dolt?

You're the guy who believes when the state executes an innocent human being, it is not murder, because executions are merely punishment for a crime. I mean, a crime was committed, so someone has to pay. What difference does it make if the person executed actually committed the crime.

You are the guy who dismisses the fact that 5% of the humans beings on this planet reside in America and 25% of the humans beings being imprisoned reside in the same America.

Clearly a tack hammer to middle of your forehead would be dangerous to the hammer.

oooOOOOooooo Tardtard spouts more irrelevancies! How predictable! Now try to focus on the issue at hand... fooooocus... fooooocuss...

Oops, too hard. Oooohh.... that looks like a cerebral hemorrhage. Maybe you should lie down in a box for... well... ever. It's more on your intellectual level.