5 ms·

>>There is no reason unions have to represent a subset of the labor force. They could very well be spread to almost all of it. Unions would provide no benefit

>>There is no reason unions have to represent a subset of the labor force. They could very well be spread to almost all of it. Unions would provide no benefit to their members if they negotiated collectively for the national workforce. It's the zero-sum rent-seeking that they engage in that benefits their members, when they force an employer to negotiate with the subset of the workforce that they represent, to the exclusion of all other workers. >>100 000$ in New York is not at all unreasonable for many public sector workers $100,000 a year puts you almost in the top 10% of income earners. When you add monetary value of the intangible benefit of being almost impossible to fire, I think we can reasonably class all ~300,000 as being in the top 10% of income earners. >>Public sector workers, especially highly educated ones, in general always lean left-wing. It's in their financial interest, as left-wing political ideology encourages more spending on social programs, which unions convert to compensation for public sector workers. Unionized public sector workers are the dominant political faction in advanced economies, and are responsible for, and benefit from, this trend: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

sudosysgen 5y ago
New York is not a Midwestern town. the median salary in NY is 67k. New York itself has ~700 000 workers, so 300k making 30k more than the median knowing they are all more educated than the average is perfectly normal. Unions provide an advantage even when everyone is in an union. Again, see the multiple countries that have almost full unionization. There is such a thing as the wage share, and there are many other advantages of being able to have a democratic input on your workplace.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>New York itself has ~700 000 workers, so 300k making 30k more than the median Which is significant, given New York has 300,000 public sector workers. The median would be much lower if you excluded them when calculating the median income. They're the dominant political faction, voting in governments that give them more tax dollars. >>Unions provide an advantage even when everyone is in an union. Again, see the multiple countries that have almost full unionization. What advantage are you talking about? Anemic wage growth? Public sector pensions that threaten to bankrupt the state? Industrial sectors that are steadily being eclipsed by East Asian economies?
Drakim 5y ago
> Unions would provide no benefit to their members if they negotiated collectively for the national workforce. It's the zero-sum rent-seeking that they engage in that benefits their members, when they force an employer to negotiate with the subset of the workforce that they represent, to the exclusion of all other workers. That's absurd, the only way this was true was if the amount of money that companies could spend on labor was completely fixed, and the only way to get a larger wage would be for somebody else to get a smaller wage.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Yes, companies could be forced to spend more on labor in the short run, but that's a Faustian bargain that harms all parties in the long run. Artificially higher wages at the expense of lower profit margins means lower volumes of investment, which reduces long-term productivity/wage growth. I recommend you read this 1957 book, Why Wages Rise: https://fee.org/resources/why-wages-rise/ https://fee.org/resources/why-wages-rise/
  - Drakim 5y ago
    This type of view of things is extremely hard to maintain considering that the last 20 years where wages have stagnated, yet productivity and profitability has been growing like crazy. Minimum wage earners have actually been dropping in pay due to deflation.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      This is NOT true. First of all, you're limiting your analysis to just the US. For the world as a whole, wages have grown more over the last 30 years than in any other period in human history: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl... Second, the primary cause of the slowdown in wage growth in the US is a slowdown in productivity growth: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stagnation/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stag...

sudosysgen 5y ago

New York is not a Midwestern town. the median salary in NY is 67k. New York itself has ~700 000 workers, so 300k making 30k more than the median knowing they are all more educated than the average is perfectly normal. Unions provide an advantage even when everyone is in an union. Again, see the multiple countries that have almost full unionization. There is such a thing as the wage share, and there are many other advantages of being able to have a democratic input on your workplace.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>New York itself has ~700 000 workers, so 300k making 30k more than the median Which is significant, given New York has 300,000 public sector workers. The median would be much lower if you excluded them when calculating the median income. They're the dominant political faction, voting in governments that give them more tax dollars. >>Unions provide an advantage even when everyone is in an union. Again, see the multiple countries that have almost full unionization. What advantage are you talking about? Anemic wage growth? Public sector pensions that threaten to bankrupt the state? Industrial sectors that are steadily being eclipsed by East Asian economies?

Drakim 5y ago

> Unions would provide no benefit to their members if they negotiated collectively for the national workforce. It's the zero-sum rent-seeking that they engage in that benefits their members, when they force an employer to negotiate with the subset of the workforce that they represent, to the exclusion of all other workers. That's absurd, the only way this was true was if the amount of money that companies could spend on labor was completely fixed, and the only way to get a larger wage would be for somebody else to get a smaller wage.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
Yes, companies could be forced to spend more on labor in the short run, but that's a Faustian bargain that harms all parties in the long run. Artificially higher wages at the expense of lower profit margins means lower volumes of investment, which reduces long-term productivity/wage growth. I recommend you read this 1957 book, Why Wages Rise: https://fee.org/resources/why-wages-rise/ https://fee.org/resources/why-wages-rise/
- Drakim 5y ago
  This type of view of things is extremely hard to maintain considering that the last 20 years where wages have stagnated, yet productivity and profitability has been growing like crazy. Minimum wage earners have actually been dropping in pay due to deflation.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    This is NOT true. First of all, you're limiting your analysis to just the US. For the world as a whole, wages have grown more over the last 30 years than in any other period in human history: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl... Second, the primary cause of the slowdown in wage growth in the US is a slowdown in productivity growth: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stagnation/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stag...