Minimum wage and unions

They wouldn't have if we hadn't let Japan screw us. They all but shut us out of their markets while having full access to ours. They literally stole whole industries from us like the television and flat screen industries. They kept our cars out by requiring inspections of $5,000.00 and charge people in Japan who could buy them after that, twice the going rate on insurance. For years our biggest export to Japan is like our big export to China is now, scrap paper and cardboard. You can thank our government for allowing them to do that to us too.

 

The biggest threat to unions is not minimum wage, but rather a large influx of immigration, desperate people from poor countries who are willing to undercut the labor cost and tolerate worse working conditions.

With an open supply of cheap immigrant labor, many businesses have fired all their union workers and replaced them with foreigners to cut costs.

 

Romney had investments in China so I've heard. Guess we can thank him too.

 

Keep in mind if the employer feels that the "demands" are unreasonable, all they have to do is to reject the proposal by the union. Bargaining is give and take in the labor business. In the private sector, if the employer feels the demands will break the back of the business all he has to do is open his books up to an actualarial and if found that it will cause the business to fold, most unions will grant easements. The union gains nothing by having a business go under, so its in their best interests to work with the employer if its proved that there is hardship for the business.

 

You make a good point about the pace of increase, but I see a different set of numbers. The current slump in hiring and wages is not because of the cost of labor, it is the lack of demand. Corporations are sitting on over 2 trillion in liquid assets and making virtually zero returns with interest rates so low. I'll propose that if the American wage goes up, over all economic activity will go up as well. Every economist I know says that injecting money at the bottom of the income ladder results in much higher economic activity than injecting it at the top. Those on the bottom spend the money just to get by or to raise their standard of living. It is overall consumer demand that must be generated, not simply lower prices.

You are correct that the Democrats jumped on the Free Trade bandwagon, another sign of their party's disarray. It is only one example of policies that Democrats have adopted as their own after the Republicans thought of it first. It has been the weakness of the Democratic resolve that has allowed the dramatic shift to the right seen in the last 30 years.

The disorganization and lack of coherent long term views has always been a difficult issue for Democrats largely as a side effect of the many diverse groups that make up their party. The Republicans, and in particular the far right libertarians, have taken a long term view and forced their agenda into the void left by the Democrats. The result has been that what was a very dubious right wing agenda has now become the mainstream. But instead of accepting the view as accomplishing their goals, the Republicans have ended up pushing an even more radical agenda citing the failures of the present, which were their original ideas, as a need to go even farther afield.

I join the growing independent middle that no longer believes the man behind the curtains. I was sold Free Trade as a part of the Supply Side economics experiment brought in by Reagan. I didn't really buy it then and now believe the results should be obvious to all. Free Trade injected profits to the large Corporations but the benefits did not flow down to the working class. Instead we have witnessed the greatest concentration of wealth in history to a few at the very top, the reason for the Tax the Rich movement is just an effort to get money back into the economy. Traditional economics say when the rich spend their wealth either through purchase of goods or investment in business, then the lower classes get their share. But the concentration has become so great that neither happens. Instead the rich have so much income it becomes impossible to spend it all. After you own palaces, cruisers, and private jets, what are you going to spend your next 100 million on? The stock market no longer is a way to invest in business but a mechanism to extract wealth from existing business to only the investors further advantage. There is no place left for the money to go so it just piles up in a few bulging vaults and is effectively removed from the economy.

You are right to point to the Government failures and policies that need change. No question there have been some bad decisions made and likely will be made in the future. But we can't let a sour history allow the current system to fail. I believe there are a few jobs that only the government can do and we can't leave them undone in fear we might do some thing else wrong.

As I said, there are a few things only Government can do. I don't want to get into specific examples or quibble over methods to accomplish those goals. But what I do believe is that you cannot simply abandon proper government roles and hope the business sector will step in to fill the void. I am all for subletting tasks to companies that can perform the service at a lower cost with higher quality. But that is a very high bar to set and you can not ignore the costs of regulating or supervising the work that is still required of the government and look solely at the contractor cost.

We maybe simply talking different time scales. I am unconcerned about tiny tweaks to the tax rates and don't think anything of significance will be done in the next couple of years. I am more interested in the underpinning economic theory and what we need to do to dig out over the long term. It took 30 years for the House of Cards to collapse and it may take 20 years to fix it.

I believe you must find some method to cease the upper flow of wealth and reverse it. That is going to take not only tax law changes, but different regulations on markets themselves. You must find a way for the accumulated capital now sequestered by corporations and top 1% to get back into economic circulation. You don't have to take it away from the billionaires, just find a way for those billions to move around and pass through the hands of the lower classes. Get back to investing in long term gains and true value rather than a board game where you loose the company over one disappointing quarter. Invest in new products and services instead of snapping up healthy companies whose stock dipped a little low and piecing them out for quick cash value.

In the short term stop the bleeding but plan for long term health.

BTW, thanks for taking the time for a very well thought out response. I hope I returned the favor.

 

'Adult Children' working minimum wage have rights too, not everyone wants to do these 'productive jobs' ...

Look at Australia, their Macdonald employees get 16.50 an hour, a living wage that is set for inflation and they are still able to have universal health care, and all the welfare they could dream of. The America taxpayer is just going to have to stop complaining, and accept this is the future of this nation.

The example has already been set by Europe, the business community has no case other than it wants to exploit the under classes for as much profits as the Fat Cat rich guys can get for their mansions. The Decider of the nation should not be immoral George W Bush, or a CEO, but Adult Children.

 

Your pose of "realism" is actually extortion. We should have the power to outlaw outsourcing and impose high tariffs. This is a typical spin, ignoring other options and establishing the lie that economic necessity instead of insatiable greed led to this economic treason. The 1% own the government and the economists who preach globalism. Cheap foreign labor has been available for 100 years, but working-class Americans, who built these companies that betrayed us, used to be real men and would stand up to the Mama's Boy MBAs.

 

Scabbing is desertion in the time of war. Your mantra only sounds righteous if whoever hears it is ignorant of the real situation. Scabs and those who refuse to join the union decrease the power of all their fellow workers. I'd do a lot worse than threaten these traitors. You got a problem with that?

 

If the guillotine fodder keeps pushing this automation they're going to have to deal with automatic weapons. We, the people (remember us?), should only allow it if technology creates new jobs first and needs to free workers to do the new jobs. This is also a result of the inadequate development of our STEM resources due to the fact that not getting a salary while in college shrinks the talent pool to a muddy puddle. It only attracts inferior talent, who can only tinker with old job processes and are unable to create new jobs.

 

And these Boytoys for the Bosses here blame Democrats for all that. Such pathetic brown-noses deserve no respect and don't deserve their jobs either. They are nothing but Sissies in Suitcoats. It's even more pathetic when they are blue-collar. Last week I got on one of those punks, who complained about having to work with people who couldn't even speak English. Sarcastically, I said, "But we wouldn't want to prevent the rich from making money off cheap labor."

He didn't say anything, so I added, "That's how the rich make every dime they've got."

He got all upset at that, "No, they don't!"

Pathetic slaveboys like that hate their Daddies for not getting rich and spoiling them. They think that by supporting rich trash, it will somehow make them rich, but it only makes them trash.

 

Unions actually support the minimum wage. Do you know why?

 

I have a real problem with teachers unions. Many unions are corrupt, and damaging institutions. The problem lies in where the discussion on the right is at this point. Many have used this fact to argue people should lose the freedom to collectively bargain. The hate from the right on unions is religious at this point. It needs no facts, it is a faith based belief.

I think at this point most Americans are saying that after 10 years of stagnent wages in the name of cheaper prices, we don't care if things go up in price.

It seems pretty obvious to most of us that the game has been rigged from trade to taxes, to illegal immigration to put downward pressure on our wages.

 

You are letting incompetent businessmen off the hook. Bizz Skool graduates are not STEM majors. If they can't manage the company well enough to pay what the employees want, they should be fired. So much of this is one-sided. They can tell us that, but somehow we can't throw it back at them.

If a fatcat meows that unions make him uncompetitive, we should tell him to finace the organization of unions among his competitors. This seems outrageous because we won't admit that we really know that the fatcats are in a cartel cathouse, a conspiracy in restraint of free labor. If he whines about foreign competition, he should campaign finance a law that imposes heavy tariffs.

Are you a man or a mouse? If you don't start telling fatcats what to do, you're not a man. A real man, on hearing the fatcats alternative to wage slavery, "To Get a Good Job, Get a Good Education" would ask, "Who are you to tell us what to do?" But nobody realizes that this is an unfunded mandate from an unelected ruling class.

 

The Federal Minimum is the least anyone can pay. If states with higher cost of living are not sufficiently raising the minimums above that basest wage, take it up with your state representatives. If it help, my state too has a minimum that is entitrely insufficient, and thus absurd, even if the highest in the nation. So I email and call my representatives frequently, demanding reforms.

You can too.

 

You miss my point, I think there should be no minimum wage. And if you want to talk about higher costs of living, you should thank the government and the federal reserve for the large increases in cost of living. Funny you turn to the institution that is the biggest cause of the problem to force others and try to "fix" it. Only raising minimum wages does not fix the problem, the economy is not a vacuum where you change one variable and everything stays the same. Law of unintended consequences.

I realize you are advocating for raising the minimum wage out of place of well meaning, but the results are not what you expect them to be. Minimum wage has never been a livable wage and was never meant to be. Something like only 3% of employed people in this country are on the minimum wage and the vast majority of them are high schoolers and college kids, we don't need to give them a "living" wage.

I myself have worked 3 minimum wage jobs in my life, within two years I was always making at least $2 more an hour because my employers recognized my work ethic and ability, I have no problem starting at lower wages because I won't be making it for long one way or the other. When you raise minimum wage you start to take these jobs away, giving fewer people the opportunity of a stepping stone in the job market.

[video=youtube;ca8Z__o52sk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk&feature=player_embedded[/video]

 

Nah; I picked up on that. I was merely challenging the absurd notion that varying costs of living somehow make one ineffective.

 

They are ineffective far before we get into unintended consequences about varying costs of living on a federal minimum wage.

 

What's to explain? Poverty is in every society. This is news to you? The US has plenty of people leaving in poor conditions.

 

They're really effective, as you pointed out, albeit unknowingly. Note your mentioning that due to you being a peach among workers, you made $2 north of minimum wage. Noodle on that for a second, and you'll get the idea.

Meanwhile, in the corner offices where we 6-figure folks plot the destruction of the competition, we know stuff such as market/consumer/individual biases, i.e., an anchor-bais. In your case, the anchor was minimum wage (don't kick yourself, since HR departments have a similar anchor, too.) Move the anchor from $7.25 to $9.00 and now the peaches such as yourself are at $11 instead of $9.25. It (FMW) has an impact, above the delta between where it was and is. Human nature comes into play, and works its magic.

Meanwhile, out in the market, something 6-figures was in lieu of me knowing things about it, consumers have and spend more buckos. Now plotting against the competition has to take into account these new buyer prospects, and we cook up promos and other gimmicks, pronto, to make sure we get the new gravy, and not the evil demons at competing companies who would take the food out of the mouths of our workers given my being lazy and not thinking ahead. But dang it, they'll respond, too. And prices tend to come down due to the increased comptition for the growing market. And of course, making, selling and delivering that stuff to consumers involves some (wo)man hours, and HR is up to their eyeballs in CVs, looking to fill the job vacancies.

But that's anecdotal. Best to look in the gestalt, since policies should be about the country and not where I worked, per se. So I've graphed the FMW, and mapped Unemployment over the top. Note the consistent down, down, down pattern in Unemployment when the FMW is going up, up, up: http://koios.us/ph/ue-mw.png

 

You are just fabricating problems. That is what defenders of the status quo typically do when faced with alternatives to conventional practices. By fabricating problems, they make it seem like the proposed alternative is unfeasible or impractical. For example, you ask about letting the "lowest bidder" teach children, the implication being cheaper = poorer quality. Now, if you are an ignorant person, that will sound intuitively correct, but if you actually understand how markets work, you will realize that lower prices and higher quality are not mutually exclusive in the least. No, in markets, where CHOICE and COMPETITION reign supreme, costs go down and quality goes up. You see this with virtually every good and/or service in the marketplace, notably, telecommunications, computing, transportation, etc. Introducing choice and competition into the education system will bring proven market processes to bear on an obsolescent, overly centralized educational model. If anything, higher costs have not translated to higher quality. Indeed, spending is continually increasing but where are the results? What have public sector unions and their absurd costs done to help failing public schools all over the country? Seems to me you are just afraid of change because your objections have little basis in reality.

 

Maybe their labor is not worth as much in the free market. Why do you oppose free choice?

 

The first unions in the US were all private. Even FDR opposed public sector unions. What history books are you reading, if any?

 

Cuz it's not always what's best for the society. Imagine if my choice would be to sleep with your 12 year old daughter; mightn't limiting my free choice be a good idea, in America?

See how that works?

 

They used to be able to. That brought violence on both sides. Finally the government had to step in to stop the bloodshed and you had the NLRA, which balanced it out on both sides.

The law says you have to represent all members regardless of whether or not you feel they are "scumbags"; furthermore, how would one determine who's a "scumbag" and who isn't? Remember, its the employer who hires these "scumbag" employees, not the union; just that the union has a legal obligation to represent them. If management did their job in the first place, firings would be far and few.

In other words, you don't believe that workers should have any rights in the workplace because there salaries are paid by the public? Its ok for private sector to enjoy these rights, but not those who either work for the public or risk their lives for us? How undemocratic is that?

 

Also interned Japanese-Americans. None of us are perfect, and neither was FDR.

But you'll note he did urge that any enterprise that does not pay a living wage has no right to exist in our society, so perhaps paying public employees a living wage and not thinking them property of the state is, was also on FDR's mind.