[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oiless', 'W')hat the f**k? What is this drivel? What point are you trying to get across?
I've been in unions, and not in unions, and I'm not in a union at the moment, so I've looked at both sides of the fence.
I always do well, I have a number of skill sets that make me valuable, so I'm always working, and always paid decently, nevertheless I see the value of unions.
Nowhere is the effect of unions more apparent than in resource towns which have multiple employers producing a single product, lumber for instance.
If one mill unionizes and negotiates a collective agreement that gives workers some benefits and decent pay the other mills promptly offer similar pay and benefits. If they did not they would run the risk of unionization, or of losing their best workers to the union mill. Unions tend to drive the standard of living up for everyone, not just union members.

[UIUCstudent01]

Under fear of union attacks the companies raise wage rates, but in turn it means they cannot hire as many workers as they could have under the smaller wage rate. People who might find work in these mill towns are therefore shut out for good.

I don't believe this for a second. This is complete and utter crap (unless you go to a stupid extreme).

I think the employee hiring is based on the demand and sales of whatever product that the employee creates.

The 'company', if it had the chance to halve the wages, isn't going to hire 100% more worker (nor 20%). It'll keep the profits and pass it on to the top - shareholders or CEO's or Vice-Presidents, whatever.

If you only need 100 mechanics to service the fleet at an airport, if you cut the wages - there isn't going to be an increase in the hiring of mechanics.

If you only need 200 assembly-line workers to saturate the market with Coke/Pepsi products, cutting wages isn't going to do anything to increase worker hiring.

The need to saturate new markets or in another product niche or whatever will increase the hiring.

Think before you spew back. There are many examples where that line of economics is just hogwash.

(Unless, of course, it's complicated shorthand for one effect that may lead to another that may lead to another...)

The example you thought was disgusting actually seems pretty reasonable to me. I wonder how the pay for the head-honchos have risen in Canada - I remember seeing some disgusting statistic of CEO's raking in MUCH more cash than their worker bees over the course of 20 years or something...

There may have been other issues that could have made the budget 'imbalanced' - so I don't know the full inside story. But if you do, and think that is despicable and vile. "Whatever man, just whatever.."

It seemed the employees got a voice.

If you want the power to Free-marketize the world - start from the top and 'trickle-down' - there's alot of manipulations at the top too - they're probably much more subtle, legal, and probably taught as business theory. Stop railing at the guys who want to keep 14 dollar wages (if that?) + benefits. Hack at the bigger roots.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('UIUCstudent01', 'T')he 'company', if it had the chance to halve the wages, isn't going to hire 100% more worker (nor 20%). It'll keep the profits and pass it on to the top - shareholders or CEO's or Vice-Presidents, whatever.

If you only need 100 mechanics to service the fleet at an airport, if you cut the wages - there isn't going to be an increase in the hiring of mechanics.

If you only need 200 assembly-line workers to saturate the market with Coke/Pepsi products, cutting wages isn't going to do anything to increase worker hiring.

[Markos101]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat is capital? In Marxist theory value is a social relation, and all value is created by labour. There's two aspect of capital, variable capital v, the surplus-value of labour turned into arbitrary value (money), and constant capital c, machinery, land, natural resources, which have no inherent value without labour. And the essence of capital is that it is social power, capitalistic ownership empowers bosses to rule wage-slaves.

To me it seems obvious that value is social and dialectical, not something inherent and technical as myopic mainstream economism claims.

Exploitation of labour is of course first and foremost subjective feeling, go ask workers of capitalistic firms and I'm pretty sure majority of them feel exploited. Workers in co-operatives would most likely give a different answer.

[rogerhb]

I've got no problem with companies making profits, I suppose my main problem is all the congratulating of people who turn the planet into crap, and think the bigger, quicker and faster job they do will benefit humanity.

It's sad that so much effort is spent trying to "sell more product to people who don't actually need it" to prop the system up.

Then it gets worse when people say, "Hey, if we can make it cheaper, we can then sell even more crap to people who don't need it".

I did a job year ago with a cell-phone company which was technically interesting, will make huge profits and but was 100% pointless. It added zero to the sum of human happiness but vast amounts of effort was wasted building, marketing and providing the service, and Joe Teenager, like an idiot, is going to pour his money back into the phone company.

I think that was the moment I became really disillusioned with the whole setup.

[oiless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'Y')ou make the common mistake of union supporters everywhere, ignoring the indirect consequence of the force-negotiated pay raises. Under fear of union attacks the companies raise wage rates, but in turn it means they cannot hire as many workers as they could have under the smaller wage rate. People who might find work in these mill towns are therefore shut out for good.

[jaws]

You're missing the point entirely. OF COURSE companies don't hire employees they don't need, they obviously want to make maximum profits regardless of whether or not there is a union. If the union forces the company to pay above the wage equivalent to the productivity of the worker, the company will start cutting back on the number of employees to maximize their profits again. That way the union just put a number of their own members, and possible future members, out of a job to secure their own privileges.

Whether or not they finance themselves or borrow money to expand is irrelevant. What matters is that before they make the decision to expand they have to decide if the expansion will be profitable. If the union is artificially imposing a higher wage rate then the expansion of the company will not be profitable and a number of potential future employees will be screwed out of a job by the union, forced into lower-paying work or plain unemployment.

This is very well illustrated in the Costco vs. Walmart competition. Costco is very union friendly and pays its employees nearly double what Walmart does. However Walmart became a much bigger business with stores everywhere and many more employees because it could turn a profit in areas that Costco could never do with its union policies. The unions of Costco secured a priviledge for themselves but screwed everyone else by forcing them to work for Walmart or not at all. If wages at Costco were lower, there would be many more Costco stores and many more Costco employees.

[rogerhb]

The current capitalist system is vastly unequal, with the divide between rich and poor increasing. There will be a tipping point where it collapses economically under it's own weight, or else a revolution from below. No country is too small to suffer a revolution, eg, Russia and China.

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'I')'ve got no problem with companies making profits, I suppose my main problem is all the congratulating of people who turn the planet into crap, and think the bigger, quicker and faster job they do will benefit humanity.

[oiless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'Y')ou're missing the point entirely. OF COURSE companies don't hire employees they don't need, they obviously want to make maximum profits regardless of whether or not there is a union. If the union forces the company to pay above the wage equivalent to the productivity of the worker, the company will start cutting back on the number of employees to maximize their profits again. That way the union just put a number of their own members, and possible future members, out of a job to secure their own privileges.

Whether or not they finance themselves or borrow money to expand is irrelevant. What matters is that before they make the decision to expand they have to decide if the expansion will be profitable. If the union is artificially imposing a higher wage rate then the expansion of the company will not be profitable and a number of potential future employees will be screwed out of a job by the union, forced into lower-paying work or plain unemployment.

This is very well illustrated in the Costco vs. Walmart competition. Costco is very union friendly and pays its employees nearly double what Walmart does. However Walmart became a much bigger business with stores everywhere and many more employees because it could turn a profit in areas that Costco could never do with its union policies. The unions of Costco secured a priviledge for themselves but screwed everyone else by forcing them to work for Walmart or not at all. If wages at Costco were lower, there would be many more Costco stores and many more Costco employees.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'I')f you do not want "power over others" then kindly quit your job.

Your jobs is NOT to make you happy only to give you "power over others".

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'Y')ou are sheading crocodile tears over your "power over others". If you do not want "power over others" then kindly quit your job.

Your jobs is NOT to make you happy only to give you "power over others".

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'Y')ou are sheading crocodile tears over your "power over others". If you do not want "power over others" then kindly quit your job.

Your jobs is NOT to make you happy only to give you "power over others".

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', 'I') do not know what your problem is.

[Macsporan]

Jaws doesn't know, doesn't want to know and his only reponse to any new information is to retail silly capitalist fairy-stories about how things should be in theory.

Of course if everything that was supposed to be true in theory was really so in practice we would have reached heaven centuries ago.

What many people still don't realise is that economics is not a science, has no rigourous mathmatical or deductive basis and is merely a grab-bag or entirely theoretical nostrums for the most part devised by Frenchmen a hundred and thirty years ago, few of which have ever survived contact with reality.

With Economics theories come first and reality is ransacked to support previously revealed truths: with science the evidence comes first and theories are tailored to explain the facts. Economics is more like dogmatic theology than physical science, which it strives to imitate.

They bought their way into the Nobel Prize game.

Not surprisingly Economics tends to endlessly bless Capitalists and Capitalism, and curse their enemies and opponents. That's fair enough, as the whole thing is a bought and paid for concoction of theirs, talking with their voice and serving their interests.

It is the greatest con-job in history and an eternal monument to the sociopathic greed of the few and the naivity of the many.

The historical record, on the other hand, is clear. Where Unions and Union-based social-democratic are strong, wealth is evenly spread and prosperity is general.

Where it is not, inequality and injustice is the rule.

"United we bargain. Divided we beg."

It is the Capitalists who are the parasites, on the sweat of the workers.

Unions merely attempt to regain a little of what was stolen, with only moderate success, I might add.

I am continually amused by the way that the Capitalist Beast, after employing batallions of academic whores to denounce Marx's Labour Theory of Value, affirm their belief in it by boosting profitability through mass-sacking (known by the slimy euphemism of "downsizing") and moving their operations to low-wage countries.

For people who blandly assure us that the Class War is a falsehood, they sure seem to be going to extraordinary lengths to win it.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', 'I')t is the Capitalists who are the parasites, on the sweat of the workers

[jaws]

That's old-school Macsporan. Every people who wanted to impose a state of affair contrary to human nature have attacked economics the same way, as a 'dismal science' that couldn't provide any insight on reality. All of them who have succeeded in implementing their system have created a catastrophe just as predicted by the economists.

It is the discovery of economics at the turn of the 18th century that led to the advance in material comfort experienced everywhere in western countries, and it is the denial of economics that led to the catastrophic poverty in the so called 'third world'. It should come as no surprise that no sooner did the two most populated third world countries, China and India, accept the validity of economic theory, that their people embarked on a project of rapid wealth generation and accumulation of capital. No further argument is necessary.

You're free to believe whatever crap you want of course. You can believe voodoo is more likely to make you healthy than medical science. You can believe physics is wrong and dropping a hammer above your foot will not have adverse consequences. The rest of society will make sure you belong in your rightful place, the loony bin.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'I')t should come as no surprise that no sooner did the two most populated third world countries, China and India, accept the validity of economic theory, that their people embarked on a project of rapid wealth generation and accumulation of capital. No further argument is necessary.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', 'I')t is the Capitalists who are the parasites, on the sweat of the workers.

Unions merely attempt to regain a little of what was stolen, with only moderate success, I might add.

[Z]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'U')ndisputable fact: if costs are lower, the profit-maximizing amount of production is higher and the final price of goods are lower.