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Freakonomics ran a recent episode on unions [1]. A pair of interesting stats were presented near the start: the approval rating for unions stands at 70% in the

Freakonomics ran a recent episode on unions [1]. A pair of interesting stats were presented near the start: the approval rating for unions stands at 70% in the US (even higher among the young) at the same time that union membership stands at 10%. Both numbers are at multi-decade extremes. I don't think it's any coincidence that this success at Amazon comes right now. After the GFC all regulatory efforts turned to keeping financial markets solvent. That has meant unwavering support for policies that favor those with assets over those who don't. The pandemic happened in early 2020 just as the wheels were flying off the US economy yet again. So what would have played out got masked by many other factors, including direct government transfers. Those stimmie checks of yore are long gone, and it will be a very steep uphill battle to bring anything remotely like that back given the rip-roaring yr/yr increase in CPI and PPI now underway. Those checks are being blamed for the ongoing inflation that more than just the lunatic fringe now thinks is the start of Weimar-style hyperinflation. So with the 2/10 year yield curve now inverted [2], it's just a matter of time before the economic chickens come home to roost once more. Will it be different this time? Will unions step in to fill the gap that government can not? [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/ [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-invert-stoking-recession-fears.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-inv...

jolux 5y ago
Why do you say the wheels were flying off the economy in 2020?
- Barrera 5y ago
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U.S._repo_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yield-curve-inversion-means-a-recession-could-hit-in-2020/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yie...
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    There appears to be technical issues that caused #1, something about timing rather than a cause that points to more serious problems. If so, the analysis in #2 is based on a data point disconnected from those of the trend. Also the trend in #2 consists if 3 data points. It might be an accurate interpretation, but curves before the '73, '80, '81 recessions didn't follow this pattern. We'd need an explanation for why that's the case, and what changed in the '90s. Without that we're just drawing a bullseye around 3 dots coincidentally close together. Was there other evidence for a recession? I know that some people were saying we were "due" for one based simply on average timing, but that's no very compelling either if GDP growth had been relatively steady. Meanwhile, this article [0] indicates that right before the pandemic got huge we weren't checking the boxes on a variety of things that would be warning signs. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/06/heres-a-list-of-recession-indicators-and-where-they-stand-according-to-bank-of-america.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/06/her...
    - pram 5y ago
      Growth was already slowing in 2019, which is why the fed started dropping rates in June. In fact 2019 was the lowest growth in the entire decade, the lowest since 2008. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50234626 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50234626
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        That same article, in analyzing the trends, gave the opposite opinion though: that we were less likely to enter a recession than some had thought: "Wednesday's figures, suggesting resilient consumer spending and strong-than-expected housebuilding, is likely to ease fears that the US will enter recession."
VictorPath 5y ago
The private sector unionization rate in 2021 was 6.1%. While productivity increased over the past half century, inflation-adjusted hourly wages are about what they were 50 years ago (it goes up and down - they were slightly lower in 2018 than 1972, a few cents higher in 2019). All productivity gains have been hovered up by the heirs and aristocracy. As it was in the Silicon Valley wage cartel which collapsed in 2014. So FAANG wages have been high for 8 years, which is a historic anomaly.
- google234123 5y ago
  Cartel is a pretty strong word for what happened and the fact that wages remained high is likely not an anomaly. E.g. Hedge funds which make similarly large amounts of money have paid their employees just as well for many years.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    The FAANGs had soft agreements to work together on labor by not hiring each other's workers. That seems to fit the definition of a cartel: "group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market" I suppose we might argue that even the FAANGs together aren't large enough to constitute the full market. Other companies compete over the workforce of FAANG-eligible workers. The long tail of such SV employers with lower employee headcount a is still probably large in the aggregate. Though even apart from no-poaching agreements I've seen it speculated that FAANGs may employ large #s of talented people somewhat unnecessarily purely to keep them out of the hands of current competitors or potential startups that could grow into competition. That's a bit too conspiratorial for me though, at least without more evidence
    - Jach 5y ago
      Notably the F did not take part in the collusion.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    A recruiter at Google was fired simply for reaching out to an employee at Apple. Cartel feels like an appropriate word.
nessguy 5y ago
I like the idea of unions more than the reality. My first job was earning minimum wage working full-time at Safeway. After working there for about 9 months I quit because I didn't want to pay union dues to join the union. I was already only making minimum wage, it wasn't like the union was improving my salary. The required hour long lunch breaks might have been thanks to the union, but I hated having to take hour long breaks. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Listening to that episode didn't change my thoughts much. One of the bigger problems I have with unions is that they always want to grow to gain more power/influence. If I'm paying dues I don't want 20% or whatever of those dues to go to what is essentially advertising/marketing. My ideal union would have low fees, not try to expand into other companies, and would be optional for employees.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  A single-company union is generally a weak union, unless the company is gigantic. Expanding to other companies is how unions gain power to negotiate more effectively, the same way that companies gain price negotiation benefits by expanding into new markets.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rocqua 5y ago
  Why would a union be company specific? It makes a lot of sense for a union to represent all workers doing e.g. car manufacturing.
  - britch 5y ago
    This is how the NLRA has been set up unions in the US--generally to make unions weaker. Other countries have sectoral bargaining, which is what you describe
  - dluan 5y ago
    Why stop there? What if we even had a huge tent, available to workers from all around the world...
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
Unions as institutions run by non-workers kinda suck; they're just another hierarchy that exploits workers, and have little knowledge of worker conditions. Most animosity towards unions is towards these ossified institutions. Unions as worker-led orgs are much better; you have faith that your reps actually know your working conditions, and you often perosnally know the rep in some capacity. This victory is because of worker-led unions.
xhrpost 5y ago
If an inverted yield curve means that investors are spooked about the current economy, and thus they favor longer term bonds, does that mean then that the market is not expecting inflation? Who wants to own a 10 or 30yr bond if they expect inflation to soar?
s1artibartfast 5y ago
There's a big difference and do you approve of the general concept of unit Union and do you personally want to be part of one. Freakonomics is a great introduction but very much pop economics with all of the problems of Journalism. They love to cherry-pick extremes and ignore detail and nuance

jolux 5y ago

Why do you say the wheels were flying off the economy in 2020?

Barrera 5y ago
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U.S._repo_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yield-curve-inversion-means-a-recession-could-hit-in-2020/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yie...
- ineedasername 5y ago
  There appears to be technical issues that caused #1, something about timing rather than a cause that points to more serious problems. If so, the analysis in #2 is based on a data point disconnected from those of the trend. Also the trend in #2 consists if 3 data points. It might be an accurate interpretation, but curves before the '73, '80, '81 recessions didn't follow this pattern. We'd need an explanation for why that's the case, and what changed in the '90s. Without that we're just drawing a bullseye around 3 dots coincidentally close together. Was there other evidence for a recession? I know that some people were saying we were "due" for one based simply on average timing, but that's no very compelling either if GDP growth had been relatively steady. Meanwhile, this article [0] indicates that right before the pandemic got huge we weren't checking the boxes on a variety of things that would be warning signs. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/06/heres-a-list-of-recession-indicators-and-where-they-stand-according-to-bank-of-america.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/06/her...
  - pram 5y ago
    Growth was already slowing in 2019, which is why the fed started dropping rates in June. In fact 2019 was the lowest growth in the entire decade, the lowest since 2008. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50234626 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50234626
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      That same article, in analyzing the trends, gave the opposite opinion though: that we were less likely to enter a recession than some had thought: "Wednesday's figures, suggesting resilient consumer spending and strong-than-expected housebuilding, is likely to ease fears that the US will enter recession."

VictorPath 5y ago

The private sector unionization rate in 2021 was 6.1%. While productivity increased over the past half century, inflation-adjusted hourly wages are about what they were 50 years ago (it goes up and down - they were slightly lower in 2018 than 1972, a few cents higher in 2019). All productivity gains have been hovered up by the heirs and aristocracy. As it was in the Silicon Valley wage cartel which collapsed in 2014. So FAANG wages have been high for 8 years, which is a historic anomaly.

google234123 5y ago
Cartel is a pretty strong word for what happened and the fact that wages remained high is likely not an anomaly. E.g. Hedge funds which make similarly large amounts of money have paid their employees just as well for many years.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  The FAANGs had soft agreements to work together on labor by not hiring each other's workers. That seems to fit the definition of a cartel: "group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market" I suppose we might argue that even the FAANGs together aren't large enough to constitute the full market. Other companies compete over the workforce of FAANG-eligible workers. The long tail of such SV employers with lower employee headcount a is still probably large in the aggregate. Though even apart from no-poaching agreements I've seen it speculated that FAANGs may employ large #s of talented people somewhat unnecessarily purely to keep them out of the hands of current competitors or potential startups that could grow into competition. That's a bit too conspiratorial for me though, at least without more evidence
  - Jach 5y ago
    Notably the F did not take part in the collusion.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  A recruiter at Google was fired simply for reaching out to an employee at Apple. Cartel feels like an appropriate word.

nessguy 5y ago

I like the idea of unions more than the reality. My first job was earning minimum wage working full-time at Safeway. After working there for about 9 months I quit because I didn't want to pay union dues to join the union. I was already only making minimum wage, it wasn't like the union was improving my salary. The required hour long lunch breaks might have been thanks to the union, but I hated having to take hour long breaks. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Listening to that episode didn't change my thoughts much. One of the bigger problems I have with unions is that they always want to grow to gain more power/influence. If I'm paying dues I don't want 20% or whatever of those dues to go to what is essentially advertising/marketing. My ideal union would have low fees, not try to expand into other companies, and would be optional for employees.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
A single-company union is generally a weak union, unless the company is gigantic. Expanding to other companies is how unions gain power to negotiate more effectively, the same way that companies gain price negotiation benefits by expanding into new markets.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rocqua 5y ago
Why would a union be company specific? It makes a lot of sense for a union to represent all workers doing e.g. car manufacturing.
- britch 5y ago
  This is how the NLRA has been set up unions in the US--generally to make unions weaker. Other countries have sectoral bargaining, which is what you describe
- dluan 5y ago
  Why stop there? What if we even had a huge tent, available to workers from all around the world...

Ar-Curunir 5y ago

Unions as institutions run by non-workers kinda suck; they're just another hierarchy that exploits workers, and have little knowledge of worker conditions. Most animosity towards unions is towards these ossified institutions. Unions as worker-led orgs are much better; you have faith that your reps actually know your working conditions, and you often perosnally know the rep in some capacity. This victory is because of worker-led unions.

xhrpost 5y ago

If an inverted yield curve means that investors are spooked about the current economy, and thus they favor longer term bonds, does that mean then that the market is not expecting inflation? Who wants to own a 10 or 30yr bond if they expect inflation to soar?

s1artibartfast 5y ago

There's a big difference and do you approve of the general concept of unit Union and do you personally want to be part of one. Freakonomics is a great introduction but very much pop economics with all of the problems of Journalism. They love to cherry-pick extremes and ignore detail and nuance