The obsession that people in the US have with unions is odd. They were never a big part of the workforce, and the reason they declined in the US is simple: they

The obsession that people in the US have with unions is odd. They were never a big part of the workforce, and the reason they declined in the US is simple: they didn't work. Too militant, links with organized crime, heavily politicized, and usually focused on industries where they could strike and cause damage. If you look at how unions operate in Europe (in the few countries that have kept it going), it is the opposite (bar places like the UK that also had militant unions that declined after most union places went out of business). But there are real downsides: spiralling cost inflation in vital goods (where unions, and in the case of the US organized crime, takes hold), low levels of competition, low levels of trade...the container ship was so revolutionary because it broke the back of the deliberate slow work of dock worker's unions (not just in the US). Where the US really stands out is low levels of redistribution, and low levels of tax on middle and lower classes (to fund redistribution)...I suspect that isn't quite as popular as romanticizing a past that never existed.