Damn Joe! I agree with much of that. I guess you learned a little from your third grade education.
However the Ds aren’t blameless, as you think. They had much to do with income inequality. Your two Messiahs, Ears and Clintons, were all about enriching the rich and themselves.
It odd but not surprising that those who extol the virtues of the "Union Age" (1945- 1970) invariably fail to note that the only industrial show in town was the US. The rest of the industrialized world lay in post WW2 rubble. Way to go, guys.
Like I said earlier. Those big union days were a bubble, and all bubbles burst. It couldn't' last forever, especially with foreign products entering the market, and a huge change in American consumer spending.
I can't tell you how many customers we lost years ago because companies either moved out of the state or out of the country primarily to get away from the unions. Unions were more than just protecting workers, they virtually took over entire businesses.
They told the company who they could hire and who they could fire. They told the company who they can promote and who they couldn't, even if the employee couldn't actually do the job. They told the company how much they have to pay the worker even if the worker wasn't worth half of his or her salary.
One of our last few union customers got rid of their union a little over a year ago. What pissed the workers off was a worthless employee getting a promotion to the highest paid job in the plant. He had the highest seniority and the union told the company he's the one that gets the job.
Well the owner of the company had to do the job instead, because the guy who got the promotion couldn't do the job. That's when the employees decided to take action.
They voted the union out, and the company decided who got that highest paying job based on ability to do it, and of course, years with the company. They fired about three people who were always worthless and never produced any real work, but they always had a job as long as they showed up and were breathing.
I love your useless stories. Always propping up conservative dogma even when the facts don’t support your tall tales.
Once the union movement was quashed, wages for working American stagnated. Companies promised wages would go up once the unions were gone. It never happened. Workers are still waiting for those raises.
So what companies made such a promise? I don't recall one.
What happened throughout the years was that when our workers made one dollar more an hour, overseas, they made three cents more an hour. When our wages raised another dollar, they raised their wages two cents an hour.
Eventually, unions priced us out of the world market.
With that competition and along with improving and greatly decreasing costs for automation, companies are looking for every way possible to cut costs to compete worldwide. That means less jobs for Americans.
We had to get rid of the unions. We had no choice, because American consumers refused to support those good jobs. That's why Walmart is number one, and Amazon is quickly taking the lead in selling consumer products.
Years ago, when you purchase gasoline, an attendant came out, filled your car, washed the windows, checked the oil and tire pressure, and you paid without getting out of your car. Then somebody had a thought: what if they allowed people to pump their own gasoline at a discounted rate??? It would keep the mechanics working on cars instead of losing money pumping gasoline.
It started out on one island. But because of demand, owners had to have two self-serve islands. Long story short, all gasoline stations in the US had to go to totally self-serve.
Did we put a lot of people out of work? Yes we did, but we saved money in the process.
Eventually, gas stations also got rid of the mechanics and service bays, and reconstructed their stations into convenience stores.
Once again, you tout the Republican Party's favourite talking points which utterly ignores the role that Republican economic policies have in impacting wealth distribution in the USA. Prior to 1980, income and wealth was distributed across all levels of society. Workers owned about 5% of the wealth of the nation, poverty had been reduced to around 10%, and the economy was strong. Reagan declared an end to the "War on Poverty" and started demonizing "welfare queens" and reducing aid to poor families. He also attacked and broke the air traffic controllers union.
Reagan promised all workers a raise once the unions were gone. It didn't happen. But what did happen was that large companies stopped giving raises to workers, even as GDP soared. Companies claimed that advances in technology increased production, not the workers, ergo the workers weren't entitled to raises. For the next 40 years, corporations absorbed increases in rent/land purchase costs, equipment, insurance, transportation, raw materials, and massive increases (1000% on average), in executive salaries, without raising the wages of their front-line employees.
During this same time frame, corporations have grown increasingly wealthy. All of these mergers and acquisitions are taking place because corporate America is awash in cash and doesn't know what to do with it. Even as their frontline workers have been losing ground economically for 40 years.
In search for ever greater profits and reduced public accountability, companies started off-shoring production. It started first for companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemicals, companies whose production is so toxic, no first world country will allow it, so they moved to countries like jurisdictions, where there was no effective environmental laws and governments were desperate for jobs for their millions of poor. Jobs started to trickle away to Third World jurisdiction, where labour was cheap and pollution was seen as sign of properity.
Companies always portrayed their abandonment of their American workers as the result of "union greed", but it wasn't the unions who were greedy. Currently, wages as a percentage of costs, is at the same level it was during the Guilded Age. Workers, who owned 5% of the nation's wealth when Reagan was elected, are now just holding on - barely, and are dependent on earned income credits, and other government handouts to get by. Every year, corporations are announcing record profits and dividends. Corporations are no longer good citizens.
I believe you posted that New York won't let Walmart in, but gave Amazon huge tax breaks. You said the City of New York shouldn't be deciding who gets to locate in the city and New Yorkers would love to shop at Walmart. My neighbourhood also blocked a Walmart Store on a property which had been home to some of the highest paying jobs in the city, and for the same reasons: jobs at Walmart pay minimum wage. Anyone who works for Walmart as their one and only job, will require social assistance to live in an expensive city like New York. Amazon jobs pay $50,000 per year. Good, solid, middle class jobs. My neighbourhood didn't want our high paying movie studio jobs replaced with "McJobs".
All of this bullshit about the selfishness of unions driving companies overseas, is just cover for the greed of American corporations in selling out American workers to the highest profits in history. Statistics from 2018, show that Trump's tax cuts have made income and wealth equality worse, not better.
American workers need meaningful raises - not 3% per year, but some form of profit sharing so that all of the benefits of GDP growth aren't going only to the top. There needs to be a huge adjustment at the bottom to end government handouts which function as wage subsidies for billionaire corporations who pay their executive millions while their employees receive food stamps.
The American Middle class was built with a union label. American workers need a voice at the table when wage decisions are made and unions gave them that voice. Without no voice, they've been left behind and ignored for so long they actually voted for Donald Trump.