Why I Don't Trust Conservatives/Republicans

Great Debates
141

Sorry, gotta disagree with you on that. Clinton didn’t get to decide economic policy by himself. (or even mostly by himself).

I think the closest we can come for a generalization is that a liberal pres and a conservative congress works best for the country.

Think Checks and balances. That’s one of the design principals of our government. Checks and balances work best when you have people in government pulling both ways. If one party owns the whole system, then you have no checks, no balance.

The Clinton years were probably some of the most checked an balanced we’ve had this century. (um. I mean last century… uh, well, whatever. You get the point I think ;))

tj

142

Ex-Tank: the “demand” has to be more than passive if wealth is to make its way down. Labor shortages will only go so far, and I think recent economic history proves that.
No business owner in his right mind is going to give up a piece of the pie without a fight. It may be good for society as a whole if he does, but he’s not in business to consider society.
My point is, there are checks and balances built into the government in order to keep any one branch of government from becoming too powerful. Ditto for the economy, in the form of businesses, consumer advocates, unions, chambers of commerce, etc. Each acts as a check on the other. In the case of unions, their mission in life, whether they know it or not, is to get the wealth distributed out from the owners and inconvenience those owners into productivity-enhancing actions. When they fail in that mission, we all suffer, whether or not we acknowledge it.

waterj2: Remember the air traffic controllers? I think it’s fair to say that economic conservatives are not at all in favor of unions.

143

Tejota: Reagan had, for most of his term, a Democratic congress. He also handed us unending deficits and the worst recession since the Great Depression.
He was also the first president since Roosevelt not to increase the minimum wage even so much as once.
Yes, as you can see from my post above, checks and balances are a good thing. First, though, you need a leader with a clue.

144

Perhaps, or perhaps the key point here is Regan & Democratic Congress. Result: Recession.

Clinton & Republican Congress. Result: Bull market.

I’m of the opinion that the composition of congress has more effect on the economy than the president.

tj

145

Actually, Alan Greenspan deserves much of the credit for the prosperity we’ve enjoyed recently. Our past Presidents had practically nothing to do with it.

146

Okay, Pantom (I keep wanting to put an “h” in your name for some reason), I see your point to a certain degree. I’m not wholly convinced that the means you cite are necessarily the best (I wasn’t advocating mine were, either, just presenting an alternative), but you make a persuasive argument.

But as to the efficacy of strikes, consider this scenario: rich businessman’s union employees go on strike for higher pay, more vacation time and better health/dental benefits.

The strikers hold out so long that rich businessman risks losing his company unless he cedes to their demands. So he bargains, gives some, gets some, and everyone goes back to work.

What’s to keep rich businessman from raising the price of his product? Maybe becoming less competitive with competitor’s products manufactured with non-union labor? With foreign labor? Maybe even not being able to compete any longer in the marketplace and having to close the doors to his business, and laying off all of those union workers?

There is a point of diminishing returns to collective bargaining, in specific cases and on the economy as a whole (ask some former union workers who have been NAFTA’d).

Like you said, there’s nothing forcing the rich to give up their money/profits. But it is in their self interest to give up enough to pay for the services of labor to manufacture a good/provide a service. So in that respect, the American worker had an effective collective bargaining tool for a while, with forces working in opposition to maintain a compromise between labor/management. Check and balance.

But NAFTA may be a blessing in disguise, for the far-sighted. As of now, America has mostly lost low-end manufacturing and textile jobs to lesser economies. Whether the net effect on the lesser economies, and their people, is for better or worse is hotly debatable, but not here in this thread (which is actually straying a bit).

This is forcing our labor force, and thus our schools and institutions of higher learning to focus in on more high-tech jobs (this is an ongoing process; we’ll never be able to say “we’ve made it, so lets stop trying”), which are in higher demand worldwide. This will, IMHO, again make America competitive globally in the Age of Information.

And I think the Air-Traffic Controller situation was an exceptional example; they had the ability to seriously disrupt the entire economy, thus hurting everyone at all levels, with a strike. For that reason alone, they shouldn’t be allowed to strike. Coal strikes were viewed in much the same way: when everyone is burning coal for energy, disrupting the steady supply will have disasterous effects on the entire economy (just look to OPEC’s policies, and the resultant domestic economic turmoil, for proof).

That doesn’t mean that I believe that employess staffing critical jobs shouldn’t have some form of having their grievances adressed. Just some other way of doing it other than shutting down a critical sector, like all air travel.

And no, I don’t have any alternative solutions for going about it, but I’m sure someone here does.

So to try to bring it back around to the OP (however obnoxiously it was worded), maybe we are working in our individual best interests, but not necessairly only in our individual best interst, to the exclusion of any and all other interests.

And not necessarily at the expense of others. Zero-Sum economics went the way of the dinosaur when Moscow threw in the towel.

So how does that fundamentally make liberals any different? It’s basic human nature to look out for yourself, and it is a foolish, lazy person who would depend exclusively on the charity of others or a government for their existence.

Because charity has been shown to linked to the health of the economy, and when the economy is in the crapper, there is a lot of people going without (just look at the Great Depression as an example) and no one feeling too generous because they need what little they have to survive.

But when times are high, and there’s less unemployment, the charity that is being given is spread over a proportionately smaller population of the needy, thus equalling more for the few.

ExTank
“Mostly Harmless :p”

147

I’m not going to argue with your scenario or with your take on the controllers’ strike, since all of it is more or less true, both in regard to some situations that have happened in real life and specifically in regard to the controllers. The point there was that Reagan and his followers took such satisfaction from the action, because they were so anti-union to begin with.
By the way, I thought NAFTA was a good thing. I’ve seen protectionism in action in Mexico, and as far as I can see it does nothing for anyone.

I’m not arguing for the perfection of unions, anymore than a conservative would argue for the perfection of businessmen. They’re loud, sometimes violent, sometimes corrupt, and they get in the way, sometimes, as you point out, to their own detriment. I grumble just as much as anyone else when a strike causes me inconvenience.
Socially, they serve a useful function though, and far more often than in the scenario you lay out, because it’s demonstrably true that unions force management into making decisions about work processes that they would not make had it not been for the cost pressure put upon them by the demands of the unions. Also, more importantly for the society at large, they shake the money tree some and get it down on the ground where it can be picked up and used by someone other than the owners, and they act as an advocacy group for a lot of liberal economic platforms, counterbalancing the efforts of chambers of commerce and other business associations. In the context of the current debate about wealth distribution, my view is that most of this problem can be traced to the current relative docility of unions, although that does appear to be slowly changing.

My idea is simply that the economy doesn’t exist solely or primarily for the convenience of the owners, which it seems to me is what conservatives sometimes seem to argue. All the actors in the economy, including the owners, need to be inconvenienced and forced from the outside to do things they wouldn’t otherwise normally do.
To get back to the OP, obviously unions do what they do because it’s in their self-interest to do it, not because they’re feeling particularly altruistic. So it’s wrong to say that conservatives proceed from selfish motives and liberals don’t. Both do, at least the majority of the time, although on both sides there are guiding principals that keep you on the track you’ve chosen even when your self-interest is not directly involved.
I, for example, make enough that just looking at my 1040 you’d think I want to see the progressive income tax abolished. But I don’t, because I don’t think it would be a fair thing to do.

148

qoute:
Perhaps, or perhaps the key point here is Regan & Democratic Congress. Result: Recession.

Clinton & Republican Congress. Result: Bull market.

I’m of the opinion that the composition of congress has more effect on the economy than the president.

Tejota, this just sounds like more partisan name-calling to me. Would you have said the same thing if the roles were reversed (i.e. Democratic pres & republican congress resulted in a recession)? Or would you have changed your equation to fit the circumstances?

149

Actually, I had two points. Neither of which I made well.

First Congress probably has more control of the economy than the president does. That is, the president likes to claim credit for a good economy; especially during an election cycle. But it’s congress that actually decides how the government will spend money and how it will collect it.

The president proposes a budget, but congress is free to ignore it at will. The pres can only veto, and with out the line item veto, that’s more of a nuke than a scalpel.

But even more importantly, if either liberals or conservatives are allowed to run the government as they like, they probably both run it badly. With no one of different ideology in power to curb their excesses, they let idology rather than sense make their decisions.

It seems to me that the optimal arrangement is to have a liberal president and a conservative congress. That seems to me to be putting them where they fit the best. Conservatives control the budget and liberals do foreign policy, choose judges, etc.

A liberal congress and conservative president doesn’t seem to work as well. Then again, Clinton wasn’t really all that liberal, and Regan was just out to lunch. So really, it’s a mistake to try to generalize much from so little data.

Except to say that an incumbent president doesn’t really have the right to claim that a strong economy is his doing.
At best he’s just one factor, at worst he’s irrelevant to it.

tj

150

Like any good scientist, I would change my theory to fit the data :wink: Are you saying that that would be wrong?

But seriously, I do think that the current crop of REPS are better suited to handling money issues than people issues. Conversely, DEMS seem to be poor at handling money but good at guranteeing rights, protecting the environment, etc.

tj

151

Pantom, my point about NAFTA is that you cannot compare the workplace of the 60’s with the workplace today. Why? A lot of reasons, but largely because we are now a global economy vs. a national economy.

For instance, in the 60’s Fruit of the Loom’s major competition was other American companies (e.g. Hanes). Because transportation costs and communication costs made it prohibitive to import goods, not to mention the import taxes. Strong unions flourished because they could.

In the 00’s, of course, Fruit of the Loom and Hanes are now competing against companies from around the globe. And they are suffering because it’s not a level playing field anymore. Other companies, esp. those in developing nations, aren’t bound by laws (created in large part because of American unions) to not hire children, to pay workers decently, to offer benefits, to put a limit on the amount of hours a person could work in a week.

And so unions in America have lost their bargaining power. When Walmart can buy a t-shirt from Hanes for $3 a pop, while a Mexican company can sell it for $1 (with no pesky tarriff thanks to NAFTA), who do you think is going to get the contract?

152

Kimstu gave you one link for studies on the distribution of wealth in this country and to what extent a rising tide lifts all boats. Here is another: http://www.ufenet.org/press/shifting_fortunes_report.html

As someone who would get about $1500 a year back from Bush’s tax plan and none from Gore’s (unless I figure out a way to take advantage of the long term care tax credit), I beg to differ with you about what is un-American and divisive. I think the precipitous growth of inequality in this country is what is un-American and divisive. And, it is even debatable to what extent the democratic experiment can survive in the face of such vast inequality. (I believe there is a quote from one of the Supreme Court Justices from earlier in the 20th century to just this effect.)

This is a blanket statement with absolutely no support. (The citizens of, say, Denmark and Sweden seem perfectly happy with their very generous social welfare systems.) But, I also don’t understand what it means because it is not even clear to me what “redistribution of wealth” means at some level. After all, wealth is currently being redistributed each time someone in an SUV drives past me as I ride my bicycle spewing noxious fumes into my lungs. That’s one wealth redistribution I would like to eliminate (e.g., by taxing gas to the levels it is taxed to in Europe in an attempt to recover at least some fraction of the external costs)…But the conservatives on this message board have so far seemed unwilling to line up in support of this idea. Also, are you proposing that we figure out how much of each wealthy person’s income comes from their ability to use public roads,to benefit from the public education system provided for their employees, to benefit from the current corporate laws, … and then tax them accordingly. An interesting idea…but it would get awfully complex!

153

PunditLisa: obviously, the Mexican company.

However, American unions have not evolved enough into organizing service workers, which is where the growth has been for a very long time now. The current head of the AFL-CIO has begun a major effort in this area, but his predecessor deserves a lot of blame here because as far as I could tell from my perch outside he seemed to be content to sit around and hobnob with politicians rather than do anything. (that was an awkward sentence, wasn’t it?)
Service industries don’t suffer from foreign competition to nearly the extent that manufacturing firms do.
Point being, unions can’t stop change. But they can adapt to it. To the extent that they haven’t adapted, they haven’t fulfilled what I see as their unique role in the economy, which is precisely wealth redistribution. Fighting for protectionism, which is what I think being against NAFTA is, will get you nowhere. It’s a rearguard action against a fight that’s already over.

154

I disagree that a unions’ role goal is to redistribute wealth. They were conceived as a way to protect the worker from unscrupulous managers. Historically, as the nation moved towards an industrialized economy, a lot of plant owners were only concerned with profit. They were basically sweatshops. And in most towns there were only one or two major players in town. It wasn’t as if you had your pick of where to work. So the employee was at a distinct disadvantage. Because, of course, he wanted to feed his family. So his options were to either tolerate the poor working conditions, complain and risk being fired, or quit.

Then one day somebody realized that if one man quit, it was no big deal to the managers. They’d just find another guy. But if the WHOLE PLANT walked out, then it was a big deal.

Strength in numbers. Their goal wasn’t to become owners. But rather they simply wanted a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labor. They wanted job safety. They wanted to go home after 10 hours without fear of being fired.

Unions played a very important and necessary function once upon a time. As labor laws increase, though, their necessity has diminished in the U.S.

155

It’s not how they percieve their role, of course. All they’re after is to get a raise, better working conditions, job security, etc. In other words, whatever the issue of the moment at the workplace is.
In the economic system though, a businessman will only raise your wages in real terms (greater than inflation) under three conditions:

1 - You get promoted.
2 - The labor market is tight.
3 - You put active pressure on through a union.

#1 has no societal effect.
#2 is happening now, but its societal effects are limited. As others have argued, the distribution of wealth right now is still more uneven than it has been historically.
#3 has immediate and long-lasting effects.

Consider the package-delivery industry. A service industry with an organized company, UPS, and as its principal competitor an unorganized company, Federal Express. You can bet that the wages and benefits at FedEx are higher than they would otherwise be because the managers at FedEx don’t want their employees even thinking about joining the Teamsters. So the union at UPS both raises the wages and benefits there and at FedEx, in what can only be characterized as a ripple effect.
It used to be, when unions were stronger, that companies would throw benefits at their workers to keep them from organizing. Now, the quality of benefits, as just about anyone on this board who’s out in the work world will tell you, gets eroded more and more every year. Where there were fixed benefit pension plans, they are replaced by cash balance plans. New startups give you only a 401(k). If you think you’ll ever be able to comfortably retire solely on that, you haven’t done the math, I guarantee you. Everyone now has to contribute, and contribute an ever larger share, to their medical benefits.
The list goes on and on.
All of this happens only because of the erosion of unions in the workplace. They are the only vehicle that will allow ordinary workers to better their lot.
To repeat,
Power cedes nothing without a demand.
Rationalize away, but that’s the truth.