They thought repealing the Glass - Steagall was such a great idea, since were beyond that. Look what happened.
Now there are some that want to do away with unions because they feel they have “outlived their usefulness” and that were beyond all that.
What could possibly go wrong?
Fine, the owner can do all the work himself then as well…except theres that pesky thing called workers that he needs.
What a conundrum.
When economists start making fortunes in the stock market better than non-econommists, I’ll start considering their theory as relevant to the shorter term.
If you’re happy planning on an evolutionary scale, or even a climate time scale, more power to you. In the mean time, human beings have families to feed. I oppose failing to use human intelligence in managing systems to avoid certain bumps in the road on the way to “free market nirvana”, especially when the countries we compete with manage their economies to outcompete us.
The market isn’t free.
In this Global “Free Market”, you would be correct in saying that someone is overpaid if say, a Chinese can build the same widget for a fraction of the cost than someone else can.
But this “Free Market” is anything but free when its effects are only allowed to be felt by the common people and not the ones at the top.
Looking at CEO pay for the US vs the rest of the world, we have:
http://www.cab.latech.edu/~mkroll/510_papers/fall_05/group6.pdf
Country Ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay
Japan 11:1
Germany 12:1
France 15:1
Italy 20:1
Canada 20:1
South Africa 21:1
Britain 22:1
Hong Kong 41:1
Mexico 47:1
Venezuela 50:1
United States **475:1 **
There are many CEO jobs in the states that can be done more cheaply by CEO’s overseas. You would not be opposed to instituting some sort of government run visa program to bring in potential CEO’s from overseas would you? It would help out the “Free Market” where companies would save vast sums of money.
Of course, when you have the board of directors deciding how much to pay their CEO’s, their not going to cut their own throats by paying him less.
The reality is that there are policies of control, and the unions provide some control for the little man, and rightly so.
Otherwise, these “Free Market” forces should be allowed to effect everyones pay equally, since clearly, there are many qualified and talented people overseas that can do many CEO’s jobs here in the states at a fraction of the cost.
Well it was a long time ago, but I was taught economics at a pretty respectable school, and had multiple professors and was set multiple reading assignments by people who believed that while free trade, in general, provided a large and unambiguous gain for society, there were certain situations where it did not. And those situations included theories of second best (playing by the rules might not be the best thing when other people aren’t) and limited protectionism for sunset, sunrise, and strategic industries.
None of those theories go against the idea that your wiki quote supposes. Nor do they go against the idea I put forward initially.
I generally consider you a moderate on most issues but on the free trade issue you are a bit of a idealogue. We don’t have free trade, we never have had free trade and until we have one world government we will never have free trade. So why does it make sense to be the only country in the world that opens its borders to free trade with mercantalists?
Why can’t we impose a carbon tax to tax imports for any excessive carbon emitted in the production of the product (we are approaching a point in time when that tax would be imposed by China on us and not the other way around).
Why can’t we protect nascent industries?
Why can’t we use protectionism to slow down the flood of jobs being exported overseas to prevent destructive dislocation, even if it as the cost of a little bit of growth? In the end we can’t stop the shift of low skill labor overseas but we can slow it enough so that people here can adapt. Instead we have seen preciptious changes in half a generation that would have taken decades if not centuries in the past. We are Americans and we can adapt quickly to anything but the rate of change has been faster than our ability to adapt.
Is there someone who is arguing for indiscriminately letting illegal aliens in. I thought the argument usually centered around how much we were willing to engage in racism and profiling to combat illegal immigration.
Yes. There are people on these boards who have argued for open borders. And you’re almost right about what “usually” transpires. One side argues for controlling our border and keeping illegal numbers to a minimum (including putting employers in jail) and the other side cries “RACISM!!!”.
A local 9/11 dispatcher made $133,000 last year, while receiving as many as 50 days off excluding weekends.
Unions don’t need to be gotten rid of; they need to be corralled. I don’t understand why union members believe they have the right to tell the taxpayer that the taxpayer needs to pay most of their exorbitant healthcare and benefit costs. They always complain about greedy corporations, yet many of their own are making hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. While people are continually living in poverty and unemployment is still an issue, so many union members demand more, more, more.
I am not pro union, I am not anti union. I am pro moderation, and unions - especially public unions - have been excessive for far too long.
One of our local 9/11 dispatcher only made $21,000 last year, while having no holidays, and having to endure daily beatings from his boss.
My unsubstantiated anecdote beats your unsubstantiated anecdote.
Then maybe you should tell the management to stop accepting the union contract proposals when they’re outlandish and instead fire the union. If it’s truly that exorbitant, I GUARANTEE you you’ll find a non-union worker for less.
What actually happens is typically that the union actually does represent pretty close to the actual value of the job, so management can’t find scabs–and decides to try to figure out how to get out of their negotiated contracts instead.
And according to my Google ads, an unemployed mum makes £6,397 a month working online. Yay! This is fun.
I heard about a 911 operator here in Nevada who had to pay $48,000 to his employer just to be able to work last year, and he had to beat himself twice a day, with no holidays or time off: he worked 24/7 all year long while paying for the privilege.
Prove me wrong.
Mine was written up in the newspaper.
Wow, that dispatcher worked double shifts all year and only took one day off a week for a whole year to earn that. What a lazy, money grubbing slacker!
I knew something was missing, the salary quoted included overtime, vacation and sick time not used and benefits. In other words, workers that indeed worked their ass off.
Since cutting benefits and many other concessions are being made the state workers in Wisconsin for example, this once again does not show a need to bust unions, but to limit the benefits.
Dispatchers across America make about 30 K.
There is a town in California that the mayor made 800 thou. That indicates that all mayors are overpaid.
Christ Almighty, you’d have to pay me a hell of a lot more than 133k to work 4200+ hours in a year.
Gotta love liberals. “We support freedom of speech and will defend your right to say it.” But when someone doesn’t fall lock step in line with your thinking, you jump all over them and attack them. CheeseDonkey, fight the good fight. Liberals just want to destroy America and turn it into their version of a socialist utopia.
They hate free speech. They only want to hear what sounds good to them. When they don’t, they jump all over those that oppose them, trying to silence them with vague insults, incessant snideness and over the top sarcasm.
The people here on this site, they are what are known as coffee-shop liberals. They are the self-diagnosed “intellectuals” of the world, those that think that because they went to a $40,000-a-year school (that mom and dad paid for) and because they were filled-in on all the ills of the world by an overpaid anthropology professor, they are better than everyone else. They are those who are walking around with their heads held high, wafting in the smell of their rose-flavored farts.
Enjoy them. They are fun to laugh at.
Desperate people will do what they have to do to support their families. If they have to step over the borders to get a job they will. NAFTA was presented as a way to elevate labor wages in Mexico. It has not. It was really just a way to cut labor costs. That end has been achieved. The borders are way too long to close. You have to actually do what we said we were going to do. Make it so Mexican worker can make a living at home. They do not want to leave their families to take an American job. But they have to do what is necessary to survive. That means they will cross the borders again and again.