[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Maddog78', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JoeW', 'T')he dimwit companies specializing in IT are just glorified pimps, interested only in selling my skills to the highest bidder and seeing how much they can smack me around before I quit.

[AgentR]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'A')h, the wonders of having a nice stable government that efficiently enforces the status quo of gradually choking the middle & working classes. A time was once this kind of abuse would have meant rich people being guillotined or burned down in the palaces.

[VZR1800]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', '.')..the yougner sheeple ppl have bought into the idea that unions are obsolete. Unions are for lazy non-skilled ppl. Well, keep the lone ranger attitude, while you get grinded into poverty, lose all yer benefits and get fired 'at will'.

[vision-master]

Management always despises Unions.

[VZR1800]

Neither my dad or I were ever management.

[turner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Starvid', 'G')uys, comparative advantage doesn't make sense in a world of free capital flows. Sorry about that.

Let me give you a classic example. Imagine you can only produce two goods, wine and cloth, and there are only two countries in the world, Portugal and England. Portugal is better at producing both wine and cloth than England is, ie., they can produce both cheaper. But they can produce wine comparatively cheaper than they can produce cloth. In such a world, English capitalists will produce cloth and Portugese capitalists will produce wine, and then they will trade their products for mutual enrichment, according to the David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage. So far so good.

But in a world with free capital flows, like our world, something very different will happen: all capitalists, English as well as Portugese, will hunt the highest risk-adjusted return in the entire world, which means all capital will flow to Portugal because that's where production of both cloth and wine is most efficient. England will be starved off capital. English workers will get cheaper cloth and cheaper wine, but that won't help because they will all be unemployed. The only solution is creating not only free movement of capital but also free movement of workers, so English workers can emigrate to Portugal where the jobs are, until equibrium is reached.

Now, what does this tell us? It tells us that what matters in the current world is not comparative advantage, but absolute advantage. This is not very alien when you get used to it. For example, corporations don't get orders because they have a comparative advantage but because they have the absolute advantage - they deliver the best product at the best price.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VZR1800', 'I')'m with you, I am 48 and despise unions. May they all go the way of the Dodo! My dad is 67 and feels the same way.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VZR1800', 'I')'m with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VZR1800', '
')I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VZR1800', '
')I'm with you, I am 48 and despise unions.
May they all go the way of the Dodo!

My dad is 67 and feels the same way.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VZR1800', 'I')'m with you, I am 48 and despise unions. May they all go the way of the Dodo! My dad is 67 and feels the same way.

[AgentR]

If you acknowledge GW is poster boy... you need to acknowledge BO as Mr. Slick of Class Inc.

[Subjectivist]

Something I have noticed, people are much more optimistic about work and their futures for the first time in years.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') survey by Bankrate has found that more Americans are becoming more optimistic about their retirement savings, according to this article on MarketWatch. This is the first time after six years of conducting the annual survey that more people voiced confidence about their retirement prospects. “The stock market has been on quite a tear,” which would explain the rising optimism among retirement savers, says a financial analyst with Bankrate. “That account balance looks a lot better, and that could be contributing to that comfort people have with what they’ve accumulated.”

[Hawkcreek]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '
')Unions are great to protect against massive layoffs, or ensure management is passing some of the profits down the line, but they suck at keeping the company at the cutting edge. Again, see the automakers and the school districts.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hawkcreek', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '
')I checked out and commissioned many industrial installations, and have always found the union worker installations were much better quality than non-union.
Its hard to beat a true 4 year apprenticeship with six months or a year of trade school.

[Hawkcreek]

If you look at places where unions have not been demonized by the media for 50 years, it seems they still work pretty well.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/#67eeb9406b78
German car makers produce what the whole world agrees are quality automobiles (Mercedes, BMW, VW, etc), and still pays its workers more than double what American auto workers earn.
The quality comes from union training, the good pay comes from union bargaining.
The manufacturer still makes a good profit.
In the USA, the elite have worked very hard to kill unions, and have almost succeeded. Now most Americans are convinced that unions are the reason that we are not very competitive in the world market. Victims of an excellent propaganda machine. But how many times has that machine every told of anything positive about unions?
Day after day, you only hear of how hard it is to fire poor workers. The real problems with American industry comes primarily from poor decisions by management. Did the workers really decide to introduce a car like the Vega?
Unions still screw up and sometimes condone featherbedding and lazy workers, but when they have been defeated in every way for the last 3 or 4 decades, I can understand a bit of petulance.