[HN Gopher] As unions decline, inequality rises
___________________________________________________________________
As unions decline, inequality rises
Author : vivekmgeorge
Score : 295 points
Date : 2022-12-17 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.epi.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.epi.org)
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Many people don't want equality... especially those who see
| themselves as superior.
| atsuzaki wrote:
| You can see it in the comments of this thread, even.
| bombolo wrote:
| Yep, like the people who say they are better than their
| coworkers and say unions would make them compensated less...
| USA propaganda succeeded... they don't even realise the enemy
| is their CEO.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| Why would the CEO be my enemy? A specific CEO maybe but
| that is a very broad claim to make.
| bombolo wrote:
| > Why would the CEO be my enemy?
|
| I studied some basic economics.
|
| The goal for a player seems to be to obtain the maximum,
| giving the least.
|
| For his very role, the CEO will pay you the least amount
| he can get away with. Ok he won't think of a few dollars
| or cents, because it's not worth to think about it... but
| when you negotiate your salary he would give you a
| negative raise if he could get away with it. And during
| normal work days he wants you to work as much as
| possible.
|
| Of course a good CEO understands that working 20h today
| means that you won't do a good job tomorrow... but the
| long term goal is that.
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| Would you not try to do something similar in working as
| minimally as possible for the pay? Does that make someone
| a bad person? Everyone tries to min-max life. Doesn't
| make them enemies or bad people, it just makes
| them...people.
| bombolo wrote:
| Yes of course I'm doing the same. I'm not saying CEO
| should be put to death... I'm saying that people have to
| understand their natural allies are people in their same
| situation.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| I want society to get richer. I want poor people (in all
| nations including China, India, and Vietnam) to earn more
| money. This is not the same thing as wanting equality.
|
| In that sense, no I do not support economic equality. Jeff
| Bezos owning 10% of Amazon worth $X billion does not effect my
| life in any way. If he owned 50% or 0.001%, instead my life
| would still be the same.
|
| I'm not sure why I need to be upset about that.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| The actual number is not upsetting, it's that 1) he achieved
| that number by exploiting workers (pee in a bottle, stay in
| the warehouse during a tornado, et cetera) and 2) not paying
| taxes.
| candyman wrote:
| Seems like less regulation and less government leads to greater
| efficiency. The rich get richer often because of government
| loopholes. Carried interest is a simple one but in the 77,000+
| pages of the tax code the rich have the resources to use lawyers
| and accountants to avoid paying taxes. Anyone getting a W2 has
| very limited wiggle room on avoiding the tax bite.
| kaputmi wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about unions. On one hand - should workers
| be able to associate freely and bargain collectively against
| employers? Yes! But, should some groups of workers be able to
| impose on everyone that they must join their association in order
| to be a worker at X company, or an actor, or something? No, I
| don't see why.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| Only management should be able to impose their will on
| employees and should be able to do so without competition. On
| the job, and during their "free-time".
|
| More seriously, imagine where not everyone is required to be in
| the union and think about how easy it then becomes for
| management to manipulate the environment to the detriment of
| union employees until the union is wiped out.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _But, should some groups of workers be able to impose on
| everyone that they must join their association in order to be a
| worker at X company, or an actor, or something? No, I don 't
| see why._
|
| We then get into:
|
| > _In the social sciences, the free-rider problem is a type of
| market failure that occurs when those who benefit from
| resources, public goods (such as public roads or public
| library), or services of a communal nature do not pay for
| them[1] or under-pay. Free riders are a problem because while
| not paying for the good (either directly through fees or tolls
| or indirectly through taxes), they may continue to access or
| consume it. Thus, the good may be under-produced, overused or
| degraded.[2] Additionally, it has been shown that despite
| evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature, the
| presence of free-riders cause this prosocial behaviour to
| deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem.[3]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem
| dnissley wrote:
| Exactly! If conditions are so bad in a company that 99% of it's
| workers immediately sign on to a union then that means
| something _very_ different than when you can only get 51% of
| workers to eventually sign on.
|
| Collective bargaining is a escape valve against shit employers
| for employees that don't have a lot of options. A standing
| union with mandated membership and support from laws and
| regulations very easily becomes something far more twisted.
| danuker wrote:
| A company should be able to set different salaries for
| unionized vs. non-unionized workers.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| This analysis ignores the effects of WWII.
|
| At the end of WWII, the USA was the only industrial economy in
| the world, not significantly damaged by the fighting.
|
| If you see, the spike of worker union participation is right
| after the end of WWII.
|
| Basically, for a couple of decades the USA had a monopoly on
| advanced manufacturing. Then as Europe and Japan caught up, there
| was more of a push towards efficiency as US companies faced more
| competition
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Sweeden too cope cope cope cope cope cope
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Economic_history_of_Sweden#Secon...
| stri8ed wrote:
| As does global warming, and pandemics. Why assume their is a
| causal relationship?
| amelius wrote:
| Can we start a union for developers that sell in the App Store?
| mannyv wrote:
| What does inequality mean in this context?
|
| The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have/had lower levels of
| inequality than the west...by making everyone poor. That is the
| easy way to reduce inequality/
|
| What the left fails to realize is that absolute inequality
| doesn't matter. The real questions is the vast majority feel
| better off? In China, hundreds of millions are wealthier than
| they were two generations ago. They have increased absolute
| inequaliry and increased equality at the same time.
|
| In fact, inequality as a concept is a ridiculous measure. What
| does equality in that context even mean? That everyone should
| make the same amount, no matter the ability or position? 90% of
| humanity would vehemently disagree with that. In fact, people try
| to flee countries who implement that sort of resource allocation.
| sopooneo wrote:
| I think your point about "feel better off" is critical, but I
| wonder if that stems more from comparison across generations or
| across the current population.
| Devasta wrote:
| There are some things, like political campaigns, where absolute
| inequality does matter. One man one vote may be true in theory,
| but in practice Rupert Murdoch has fat more political sway than
| anyone on this thread precisely because of his wealth.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Rupert Murdoch has sway because he owns the most watched news
| network in America. He could give away all his money tomorrow
| and his sway would stay the same because he controls a major
| news network.
| Devasta wrote:
| When people talk about wealth, they generally include
| assets such as the companies owned.
| Closi wrote:
| Is that a problem with income inequality, or a problem with
| political campaign financing rules/influence in a system
| which has wealthy people?
|
| Personally I think lower inequality in our society would be a
| good thing - but also with political influence there are more
| direct faults/solutions.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Is that a problem with income inequality, or a problem
| with political campaign financing rules?_
|
| In the US those are intertwined:
|
| > _The court held 5-4 that the free speech clause of the
| First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting
| independent expenditures for political campaigns by
| corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor
| unions, and other associations._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
|
| More speech for the rich.
| gfdsgfsdgfdsg wrote:
| The New York Times is funded by the rich. Should their
| speech be restricted too?
| throw0101c wrote:
| _In the context elections and political sway_ , if you
| want to be closer to one-person-one-vote, then the New
| York Times would be restricted when it comes to elections
| so they do not have more sway than a random blogger.
| Closi wrote:
| What I mean is that they are only intertwined because of
| that campaign financing rule - they aren't inherently
| intertwined. And the more obvious and immediate solution
| (to me) is to change that rule and stop them from being
| intertwined rather than to somehow fix all wealth
| inequality.
|
| As an absurd example, let's say I made a law that said
| that people with brown eyes can slap people with blue
| eyes. In this world, slapping people and eye-colour would
| be intertwined. This doesn't mean it's inherently a
| problem with brown eyes, or that eye colour and slapping
| are inherently intertwined. The obvious fix for this
| would be to change the rule rather than to change
| everyone's eye colours.
|
| As in the US wealth and political donations are linked,
| the initial problem is that those two are linked
| together. There is nothing inherent that says you need to
| reduce income inequality to reduce the impact of wealth
| on politics - i.e. you can reduce the impact by changing
| legislation so the two aren't intertwined.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's no way to make a sane case that it is the fault
| of a single law, or an idiosyncrasy of US campaign
| financing, that the amount of money you have has an
| decisive effect on politics. It's not a question of blue
| eyes vs. brown eyes, it's a question of wolves vs.
| kittens.
|
| edit: If you want to do something politically that would
| harm my business, I can just silence you, have you
| jailed, or kill you. No campaign finance necessary. I can
| sponsor debates about the degree to which you molest
| children in my newspapers and on my television channels
| every day.
|
| Hell, the money that goes to campaigns that isn't wasted
| to party graft just goes back to media owners, anyway.
| It's like US foreign aid, denominated in store credit at
| US favored contractors.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| This is shocking news to me. How many extra votes does Rupert
| Murdoch get? What is the exchange rate from dollars to votes,
| precisely?
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| Is this sarcasm? I actually cannot tell.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| greenie_beans wrote:
| lol who's gonna tell them
| Devasta wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It
|
| Murdoch's own papers claim credit for election victories. I
| don't know the exact conversion rate from dollars to votes,
| but it's absurd to suggest one doesn't exist and that
| Murdoch's organizations don't know what it is.
| flanflan wrote:
| is this a serious comment? Rupert murdoch is a global media
| baron, he literally owns news outlets that encourage people
| to vote in one way or another. Do you think those news
| outlets are free of his ideology? do you think the
| washington post is free of Bezos' ideology?
|
| Even billionaires and millionaires who dont own media
| companies have outsized influence. They can fund
| politicians they prefer to an extent that a rival might not
| be able to match. They can pay for lobbyists. There are a
| myriad of ways that dollars turn into votes without a
| mustachioed man walking around with a bag of money being
| involved. Mass movements aside the working class isnt out
| there propping up politicians.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| flanflan wrote:
| oh my god
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
| next_xibalba wrote:
| You haven't presented _any_ evidence. So I 'm not sure
| how this is "pursuing people with relentless requests for
| evidence, often tangential or previously addressed".
|
| Do you think it uncivil to ask people to justify their
| claims with evidence?
| pretendscholar wrote:
| Ask a serious question then.
| sopooneo wrote:
| I don't know these numbers, but I bet someone on Murdoch's
| staff does, at a statistical level.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > What the left fails to realize is that absolute inequality
| doesn't matter.
|
| 1) It's always paternalistic to try and explain to people how
| they should feel, especially when the social group in question
| is 55-60% of a country of 330M, it's not a matter of being
| right or wrong. It's a matter of Tilting at the windmills vs.
| not Tilting at the windmills.
|
| 2) It's impossible to solve inequality because every complex
| system is a Pareto system, however Pareto says nothing about
| the speed of the turnover of the top 20%.
| indiogrindio wrote:
| > 90% of humanity would vehemently disagree with that.
|
| > The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have/had lower levels of
| inequality than the west
|
| > In China, hundreds of millions are wealthier than they were
| two generations ago. They have increased absolute inequaliry
| and increased equality at the same time.
|
| Sources? Do you have any data or metrics available for your
| claims (outside of Facebook memes)?
| surement wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/size-poverty-gap-
| countrie...
| bombolo wrote:
| So you are saying there is nothing wrong with a country where a
| few own everything and everyone else doesn't even have access
| to healthcare?
|
| > In fact, people try to flee countries who implement that sort
| of resource allocation.
|
| Yes, rich people, lol. People who GET access to things like
| housing and healthcare remain.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I feel like you are mischarecterizing OPs argument. His
| argument is that rather than focus on inequality we should
| focus on increasing everyone's standard of living overall.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > we should focus on increasing everyone's standard of
| living overall
|
| The most important quality of life metric is mental health.
|
| There is no way around the fact that mental health is
| heavily impacted by the fact that citizens feel worthless
| when they assess their social status vis-a-vis the top 1%
|
| And no amount of stuff will solve this problem because
| social status is a zero-sum game.
|
| It's one of those problems that simply cannot be solved.
| flanflan wrote:
| i dont think people revolt because they feel bad when
| they compare themselves to the 1%. People revolt because
| they have nothing to lose. Their material conditions are
| the most important thing in this equation. I'm sure that
| a populace can tolerate inequality to a point (look at
| the inequality in the US and Europe, for example) but
| once a large enough slice of the population has nothing
| to lose then it's choppy boy time.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| You are right, but it's desirable to prevent suicides and
| mass depression just as much as it's desirable to prevent
| revolts.
|
| Revolts spark because people have nothing to lose
|
| Mass depression, bad mental health on a country level and
| suicides happen when people feel worthless
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _What does inequality mean in this context?_
|
| Everything going to the top, and nothing going to those on the
| bottom.
|
| > _The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have /had lower levels
| of inequality than the west...by making everyone poor._
|
| Seems like your examples also have things going to the people
| at the top.
|
| A comment from a few years ago that I saved:
|
| > _If we suppose that the goal of society is to produce the
| greatest utility, and that the utility wealth provides an
| individual is sub-linear (i.e. twice as much money makes you
| less than twice as happy), then inequality is inefficient
| resource allocation._
|
| > _However, we also suppose that some level of inequality can
| lead to greater productivity, and thus greater utility overall.
| The question is then what level produces the best outcome?_
| [...]
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342
| gfdsgfsdgfdsg wrote:
| Why aren't poor Americans immigrating elsewhere if they have
| "nothing"? The poor in other countries are risking their
| lives to come to America.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _" nothing"_
|
| * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/proverbial
|
| * https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literal
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Of course, correlation does not equal causation!
|
| But in some cities, the govt is required to do work only with
| labor unions. In that case, joining a union might help, because
| the government has taking away your competition!
| WalterBright wrote:
| As the government share of gdp rises, so does inequality.
| Increasing tax rates, and increasingly progressive tax rates,
| provide an increasing barrier to moving up.
| dzink wrote:
| World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this. There
| is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article's
| logic. I'd argue the unions were a bi-product of a historically
| rare moment in time vs cause of equality. The market bust and
| global world war increased taxation, demand for workers, and
| value of each worker in the early 40s. Much more importantly, for
| a few decades after WWII all other global world powers were
| rebuilding after being leveled by the war. The US instead
| remained as the last productive developed nation standing for
| decades and enjoyed likely huge margins as a result of both lack
| of competition and demand for supplies by the rest of the
| developed world. Those margins and the unscathed living
| conditions, also turned the US into a magnet for technical and
| scientific talent from everywhere else.
|
| The more competition recovered in Japan and elsewhere, the less
| bargaining power and surplus could be captured by Unions. The
| Union-driven higher costs of manufacturing also drove
| outsourcing, off-shoring, and did not lead to higher quality
| output, (if Unions were producing higher quality that would have
| kept Japanese-manufactured cars from dominating US car sales
| shortly after).
|
| Even further, exorbitant labor costs make it worthwhile for
| manufacturers to do capital investments in automation, and we are
| seeing the output of that.
|
| The rise in middle class should probably be attributed to
| investments - in equities, bonds, house purchases. Growing up in
| Eastern Europe, where only housing investment was an option, and
| unions were abundant, the middle class that sprouted came from
| those who invested in property and business. Labor union power
| and wealth was too politically and corruption influenced to be a
| sustainable source of growth for the country.
| blululu wrote:
| Not trying to start a flame war, but the Japanese are an
| example of an economy where unions work really well. Their
| constitution and labor laws were largely written by New Deal
| Democrat inflected occupation forces who set up labor rights
| that Detroit fought against (somewhat successfully) for years.
| Some have even gone to suggest that the competitiveness of
| their auto industry stems from the fact that labor is
| effectively a fixed cost and a controlling stakeholder so the
| incentives to improveme process align nicely. This isn't a
| pro/con union position it is more of a nuance that some unions
| are better than others and the historical/legal context for
| unions shapes that effecitvness. Unions can be a positive force
| but they can also be a negative force. A one sided account for
| them being good or bad is just too simplistic to be credible.
| boycott-israel wrote:
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| > World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this.
|
| I'm going to stop you right there because that shows you're
| quite literally making this up based on feelings or beliefs.
| You're totally misrepresenting the history of labor unions.
| Labor unions were on the rise all throughout the 1800s and
| early 1900s.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/the-history...
| dehrmann wrote:
| This backs up that labor unions grew a lot during the war and
| continued growing after the war.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta.
| ..
| jmyeet wrote:
| > The rise in middle class ...
|
| The "middle class" is a myth and is a propaganda tool for
| creating dissent. There are really only two classes:
|
| 1. Capital-owners. Think Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page,
| Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc; and
|
| 2. Workers. This is anyone who trades their labor for an
| income. This covers everyone from the janitor to LeBron James.
|
| The idea of the "middle class" is to create a division between
| them and the "lower class". The "middle class" often look down
| on the "lower class" and lump those who might rely on welfare,
| etc. The "lower class" will be blamed for many of society's
| ills.
|
| The truth is there is no division. What you think of as the
| "middle class" and "lower class" are exactly the same and have
| way more in common than to the Musks, Bezos's and Buffett's of
| the world.
|
| Billionaires have class solidarity. The dire situation of
| stagnant real wages and skyrocketing cost of living is largely
| a result of workers not having class solidarity.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I am a worker. I am also a capital owner, though on a small
| scale, from investing the surplus of my pay for my labor.
|
| I am far from alone. And the existence of people like me kind
| of blows up your neat theory.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Do you employ multiple workers, either directly or through
| your investments, to be able to sustain yourself through
| profits?
|
| You are the perfect example - someone who's managed to
| squairrel away a tiny fraction of the capital pie and now
| imagines himself to be in a different class.
|
| Just because you now own a sandwind does not you a
| capitalism make.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| My IRA and 401K aren't quite enough to sustain me, yet,
| but I'm getting there.
| ponow wrote:
| This argument needs to be made more. Thanks!
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > The Union-driven higher costs of manufacturing also drove
| outsourcing
|
| Gousing prices are the cause of higher cause of manufacturing.
| I am not sure how noone is talking that a worker in the west
| cannot compete eith a worker in a developing country when his
| rent is 10x higher. Then peolle have the guts to blame unions.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You really need to squint at the sun to conclude that.
|
| As money interests have become more politically powerful, it's
| harder and harder for employees to organize. You can get fired
| at Walmart if 4 people are caught talking to each other.
|
| It's easy to rag on unions, but usually that's a surface
| complaint ignoring the factors causing it. Even globalization
| is an example. There's nothing etched in stone that says we
| need to have child labor mining in Africa for rare earth
| minerals to make iPhones.
| runarberg wrote:
| There is also the fact that the so called "globalization"
| enabled the free flow of capital, but not the free flow of
| workers. Meaning it created geographically sanctioned low-
| labor zones for the capitalist class to exploit, while
| enforcing strict border controls such that international
| solidarity between workers of the world could never form.
|
| This is an explicit policy choice by the ruling class, and
| has proven awfully convenient for the owning class.
| simplotek wrote:
| > As money interests have become more politically powerful,
| it's harder and harder for employees to organize. You can get
| fired at Walmart if 4 people are caught talking to each
| other.
|
| Totally this.
|
| We can't pretend that the likes of Amazon et al haven't been
| repeatedly caught being openly hostile and extremely
| agressive towards any semblance of a labour rights
| organization within their workforce, with union busting
| strategies being discussed, planned, and executed at the VP
| level. They went as far as executing smear campaigns in the
| media targeting labour representatives and activists.
|
| No one can claim that unions are in decline due to some
| unavoidable law of nature when huge multinationals once led
| by the richest man in the world invest so much time and
| effort and money at the VP level to sabotage them.
| Aunche wrote:
| >Even globalization is an example. There's nothing etched in
| stone that says we need to have child labor mining in Africa
| for rare earth minerals to make iPhones.
|
| This is a concern troll. If you really cared about child
| labor abroad, you would unequivocally support globalization
| as parents don't want their kids to be slaves and more jobs
| in these countries gives parents more options. Child labor
| and slavery is caused by a lack of oversight more than
| anything else, and unions in the US won't help that.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Tell me how globalization has improved conditions in the
| Congo?
| Aunche wrote:
| Companies don't want to invest in a unstable and corrupt
| country. Even so, the rapid rise in HDI of the DRC aligns
| with the growth of their exports.
|
| You seem to be implying that colonization is synonymous
| with globalization, but let me dispel this notion. The
| problematic part of colonization were the protectionist
| aspects of it. The Congolese were unable to compete for
| the same administrative positions of that the Belgians
| enjoyed.
|
| Now you tell me how unions in the US are supposed to help
| the DRC.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I didn't say that.
|
| I said that globalization is an example of money driving
| policy at the exclusion of all else. High minded bullshit
| about resource extraction making your life better is
| similar to the bullshit narratives used as justification
| of colonialism.
| soco wrote:
| Re. unions: especially in the Eastern Europe I don't think
| unions deserve to be called like that "unions". They were just
| facades for the "communist" political power to reach into every
| corner of worker's lives. Unions real meaning is negotiation
| power against the employers, and you must agree there was
| exactly _zero_ of this in the EE. Might have been something
| before communism took over, but after WW2 there was no union
| left worth their name behind the iron curtain.
| scarmig wrote:
| > after WW2 there was no union left worth their name behind
| the iron curtain.
|
| Solidarnosc.
| soco wrote:
| Agree on that. Still it's difficult to see it as "union",
| rather as grassroots opposition party.
| geysersam wrote:
| This is bizarre.
|
| Of course there is not one single factor determining the
| economic, technical and social development of countries over
| decades of time.
|
| But the relationship between unions, the labor movement, and
| social democratic policies is obvious.
|
| Those in turn have had a large impact on equality and standard
| of living.
|
| The economy benefits from having a larger base of well off
| consumers, and a well educated, healthy, non-striking labor
| force. It's a self reinforcing positive spriral.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the
| article's logic
|
| No, there isn't. The causation is self-evident, and also
| unsurprising since it's the whole point of unions.
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| I think stating that something is self-evident is not a
| helpful argument. First, it seemingly isn't or else parent
| would not have posted as such. And secondly, something being
| self evident is only used when you want to describe an axiom
| because you cannot prove otherwise.
| civopsec wrote:
| Saying that something is merely a "correlation" (not a
| causation--and implying that this _other thing_ is) and
| saying that something is "self-evident" are both arrogant
| statements when you just end up saying, hey, look at this
| narrative that I like instead.
| geysersam wrote:
| As someone who lives in a country were unions were one of
| the major political forces during the 20th century, the
| impact they had on the social and economic development is
| truly self evident and mostly (overwhelmingly so) positive.
|
| Of course, the GP might be from a country with another
| experience.
| zdragnar wrote:
| American labor unions are closer to cartels and the setup
| would be illegal in many European countries; in some
| states you aren't forced to join a union, but you still
| have to pay at least part of the dues that ostensibly
| covers contact negotiations. In other states, you must
| join the union as a condition of being hired.
|
| Contrast that with countries where unions (like health
| care) are not tied to an employer. The whole dynamic is
| very different, and I think less adversarial between
| unions and employees.
|
| In the US if you have a problem with your union, you are
| out of luck. Make waves, and the union will make your
| life hell. It's a second layer of rent seeking
| management.
|
| Ever since the SEIU tried to take a cut of all government
| benefits to families who care for disabled people in MN,
| it was obvious that unions here exist to serve only
| themselves.
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| Ok, fair point from an individuals view. But considering
| that its known that unions are a controversial opinion,
| it would still seem rash to state its obviousness.
| phil21 wrote:
| It's completely "self-evident" to me that the US can never
| re-achieve post-WWII prosperity largely for the reasons OP
| stated.
|
| It was a moment in history that will not repeated in any of
| our lifetimes. Anything else against this backdrop is
| basically a rounding error.
|
| I was alive during the drawdown of US industrial capacity and
| my entire family was blue collar mostly union workers. In my
| teens and 20's I worked such jobs. This narrative still rings
| largely true to me. The amount of outright waste and fraud in
| these industries at the labor level was astronomical. We were
| begging to be outcompeted. Combined with managerial
| incompetence we were doomed.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> It was a moment in history that will not repeated in any
| of our lifetimes._
|
| Unless of course we have another world war, which isn't
| really unlikely given the shortages and events climate
| change will bring in the future.
| indiogrindio wrote:
| > There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the
| article's logic.
|
| No there isn't. You just didn't read any of the links in the
| article that it used for support, IE
| https://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-cha...
|
| > The Union-driven higher costs of manufacturing also drove
| outsourcing, off-shoring, and did not lead to higher quality
| output, (if Unions were producing higher quality that would
| have kept Japanese-manufactured cars from dominating US car
| sales shortly after).
|
| You can't have it both ways in your argument. You set up an
| initial statement about high Union costs driving outsourcing,
| and then immediately drop that point as you pivoted to an
| argument about quality being the driver.
| jostmey wrote:
| Politics aside, there might not be a causative link between
| unions and inequality--just a correlation. Supporting unions may
| or may not reduce inequality
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The exact attitude in this thread is why people don't like
| unions.
|
| It's this smug idea that the workers are simply too stupid to
| understand that they should join the special club. Not that they
| don't don't like jt, or have made an informed decision about it,
| it's because they are dumb and not capable of advocating for
| themselves.
|
| I don't want to be in your weird HOA club. Leave me alone and let
| me do my work and go get a job in HR so you can be a part of the
| PMC, which is obviously what you are after anyway.
| leach wrote:
| It's quite annoying when people just assume that a union would
| be the best thing for you. They clearly have no idea and just
| read on the internet that a union would be good for workers so
| obviously they have to align with that view.
|
| The last thing I want is for freeloaders to essentially never
| get fired and for some parasitic entity to collect dues for
| "bargaining" that usually isn't even worth it by the time they
| finish negotiations. Especially in todays climate.
|
| Sure the threat of a union may mobilize a company to be more
| competitive and pay more, but the actual unions themselves just
| seem to never work out. Expecting an entity that doesn't do
| much to get you all these benefits is almost insane. When has
| any union actually got everything they promised? Never, at
| least not in America.
| steve76 wrote:
| renewiltord wrote:
| Every time I read something on HN about immigrants I know what a
| tech union would look like. Like the AFL CIO of old, it will be
| anti-immigrant. That specifically does not work for me.
|
| Confoederationes commercii delendae sunt
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| What is the impact of inequality in a job seekers market? The
| perception I have is that employers are seeing difficulty in
| hiring. Would not inequality and diversity increase in such
| markets, as employers lower barriers and reduce leverage?
| TexanFeller wrote:
| Do China and similar powers have pervasive unions? If the rest of
| the wold doesn't, unionizing in the US may be a very temporary
| victory as union demands encourage even more offshoring and
| automation. We compete globally now. Globalization may be the
| bigger source of inequality in the first place.
| danuker wrote:
| Globalization moves money to people most in need of it (i.e.
| developing countries with cheap labor/resources).
| susanasj wrote:
| I think this is a good article for tech workers to read to
| provide perspective on our place in the tech economy
| (particularly Americans): https://organizing.work/2020/12/there-
| is-something-missing-f...
|
| particularly this part: > Early on in my own career in the
| industry, I felt guilty about making a "good" salary. Why did I
| deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse? Of course,
| I don't -- they deserve a lot more too. But if I was making less
| it would go straight into the pockets of investors, not other
| workers. Tech workers' labor has made six of the world's ten
| richest people, and today computing and the internet are an
| integral part of every industry. Although some workers are highly
| paid, the differential between investor profits and employee
| salary is as stark as in any other industry, because workers are
| not organized.
|
| it's true that tech workers frequently make good money and we
| should be grateful for that, but when our industry is producing
| oligarchs like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, it means that they are
| profiting from the things that tech workers produce. It's how
| inequality is increased. It's no coincidence that the rise of the
| tech economy has coincided with American inequality rising
| sharply.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| "deserve" doesn't exist. What does exist is "what price makes
| the market clear".
|
| Assigned moral worth or whatever "deserve" is trying to get at
| has nothing to do with economics.
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| Why shouldn't we have ethical opinions about the economy?
| nec4b wrote:
| Do you have ethical opinions for example about Newton's
| laws in physics? Or do you accept them for what they are?
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Humans design the system in which the market operates.
| Obviously one cannot make an appeal to change physics.
| nec4b wrote:
| We design car and planes just as well with physics.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| This is not analogous. You likened criticizing our
| economy (inclusive of the state of various laws that
| determine how it impacts people) to criticizing physics
| itself (to suggest that doing so is unreasonable).
|
| The economy is like a singular, gigantic vehicle we all
| occupy. It abides certain natural laws (such as human
| nature, and the scarcity of certain resources), but the
| vehicle itself is designed by some of our fellow
| passengers (and its design does not optimize for the
| things many of us feel it should).
| nec4b wrote:
| Sure it is. You and other passengers are trying to design
| the vehicle by ignoring human nature, scarcity, etc. (the
| physics). Because you are asking yourself why does the
| piston deserve all the fuel and not the headlights.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| And if somebody makes a shitty car that contains an extra
| bomb that randomly explodes and kills people we tell them
| that's a shitty car. We don't blame physics.
| parthianshotgun wrote:
| This is sarcasm I'm assuming?
| nec4b wrote:
| I thought implying there was some sort of cosmic
| injustice when a software developers"deserves" more than
| a nurse, was some sort of sarcasm. We would never
| understand anything about the world if we talked like
| that about for example why does this rock deserves a
| higher potential energy than that acorn.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| So, things like "functioning markets are good" and "price-
| fixing is bad"?
| User23 wrote:
| And usury is awful.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Slave markets were functional. Feudalism was functional.
| The market for drugs and organs are functional.
|
| Lets try tougher ones - are markets captured by cartels
| functional? Does OPEC inhibit free market or are they
| free market in action?
|
| When tech companies create anti-poaching agreement to
| supress wages, is that functional?
| slg wrote:
| This is only true if you think "economics" and "capitalism"
| are the same thing.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I phrase things like this: the lack of real labor power
| through unions or ideally worker cooperatives leads to bad
| deals for workers. It would be in the interest of workers to
| build collective power and demand better compensation or
| start their own cooperatives to guarantee higher pay and
| benefits.
|
| This has to be said because collective action necessarily
| requires convincing a lot of people to do it. But either way
| this language avoids the claim of right and wrong and simply
| focuses on the fact that workers today get a bad deal due to
| poor bargaining power.
|
| It's also not just about markets. The federal government
| places severe restrictions on what organized labor can do to
| advocate for itself: Labor Management Relations Act of 1947
| Aka "Taft-Hartley Act" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft-
| Hartley_Act
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| People who go on about markets pretend that power dynamics
| and behavioural economics don't exist.
| ncr100 wrote:
| +1 Worker-Unions-conversation-point for using "oligarch" in a
| comment. /jk
|
| The comment about "used to feel bad about making a lot of
| money" hits home for me, when I compare my wages to other
| family members who're struggling. Thanks for the perspective,
| it helps open me up a bit more about this.
|
| Great information in the link, too - helps to consider whether
| and how a Union might be attractive, under various workplace
| circumstances.
| [deleted]
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| One of the memes that you frequently see in the upper middle
| class left-leaning tech worker circles is that anything less
| than a worker co-op is ultimately an organizational structure
| that is inequitable and exploitative to its labor force,
| leading to negative externalities for society at large.
|
| I'm 100% ignorant of the history of labor and of all
| philosophical dialectic around it, but I would love to form an
| opinion on this. Would someone mind steel manning both sides of
| that argument?
|
| E.g. I have questions like, if I'm the founder of a company and
| I sell it 10 years later and make most of the upside, did I
| exploit my employees because they didn't make as much as I did
| in the end?
| scarmig wrote:
| Argument for the meme:
|
| Labor unions don't challenge the core structure of
| capitalism; even when they're working, they mostly serve to
| give a slightly bigger piece of the pie to workers. And in
| practice, they are hijacked by a certain bureaucratic caste
| that mostly optimizes for stability and self perpetuation.
| They become integrated with state sponsorship, which will
| never allow for substantive change. For instance, in the USA
| the general strike was a powerful tool in the arsenal of
| workers' power and drove substantial wage gains, but
| disrupted capital too much and as such is banned by the NLRB.
| Since unions' scope is limited to accounting, law, and
| mediation, they become mostly administrative organizations
| staffed increasingly by members of the professional services
| class. These people can never provide leadership that
| primarily serves the working class, as their economic
| interests diverge and they can't do anything that would
| threaten their social good standing.
|
| Argument against:
|
| An economy dominated by worker co-ops is just wishful
| thinking. We have no idea how to get from point A to B, and
| no idea if it would even work. The limited evidence we have
| for that kind of economic structure comes from post WW2
| Yugoslavia and suggests it wouldn't ("they just didn't do it
| right!" invites the question of how we do do it right).
| Conventional unions do shift some of the capital pie to
| workers, and we shouldn't let a very hypothetical best be the
| enemy of the concrete good. And even if worker co-ops are the
| ideal, any path that gets us there requires more worker
| power, so stronger unions would be a good first step to
| getting us to that point.
| nightski wrote:
| Nothing is stopping anyone from forming a worker coop in
| the US. Yet few do. Have you ever considered this?
| scarmig wrote:
| 1) That was a statement of arguments about whether or not
| a worker co-op driven economy is superior to labor
| unions, from a pro-labor perspective. Stating an argument
| doesn't mean endorsement of it; that's the entire point
| of steel manning.
|
| 2) To the extent I buy either argument, I don't think
| it's subtle that my sympathies lie with the criticisms of
| an economy of worker driven co-ops.
| jtolmar wrote:
| A highly successful worker coop leads to a bunch of
| people with comfortable lives and steady jobs.
|
| A highly successful privately owned company leads to a
| handful of people with a ton of money and free time,
| which they can use to found other privately owned
| companies.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| At least with startups, are most founded by affluent
| people with free capital and time, or by those who sign a
| deal with VC? Afaik YC founders aren't thousands of bored
| millionaires, they're average middle class people with a
| college degree who quit their jobs to live on their seed
| investment for a few years, and share the spoils in the
| end with their employees and investors if the project
| succeeds.
|
| Can you get away without initial starting capital if your
| startup has a very low chance of success? You need
| someone to be willing to eat the 99% risk of failure in
| exchange for proportionally high returns.
|
| I imagine the same problem is much ameliorated if you
| were opening a pizza shop, a daycare, or a hair salon,
| where the business is more predictable?
| scruple wrote:
| I have, yes, and I've gone as far as finding friends and
| former colleagues who would be interested in joining me.
| Unfortunately health insurance is tied to employment in
| this country and we all have families. The uncertainty in
| that regard leaves it a non-starter for people in our
| situation. At least for the time being.
| nightski wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow on how that would stop you from
| forming a worker co-op. Almost all businesses who have
| full time employees pay for health insurance. Are you
| implying a co-op would make less revenue and therefore
| could not provide its employees insurance?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also, in favor of point b, both can coexist, the same way
| that TV did not entirely eliminate the radio.
| edent wrote:
| The traditional view is that "The workers control the means
| of production".
|
| Suppose you built a successful small company but, suddenly,
| every employee quit at once. Could your business carry on the
| next day? Could it survive until you hired and trained
| replacements?
|
| If the answer is "no" then you have made the case that
| employees both deserve to share in the business's success and
| will probably be incentivised by co-owning the company.
|
| Does the janitor deserve as much of the profits as the CTO?
| Well, what premium do you put on your other employees not
| getting sick, or injuring themselves?
|
| (Wasn't there a case where a Google chef made a fortune from
| stocks? Much to the chagrin of some?)
|
| The opposite argument is that those who risk capital are the
| only ones who deserve the reward. Without investment, a
| company can't launch or grow. Workers are an operational cost
| - they are paid for labour and no more deserving of reward
| than the electricity company. Both provide a service but
| neither takes a risk.
| nec4b wrote:
| Can you build a house without a carpenter? If not, is he
| entitled to a part of your house even though you paid him
| to build it?
| edent wrote:
| I would say that, yes, a carpenter is entitled to a share
| of the profits. They used their labour to build something
| which appreciates in value.
|
| Traditionally, it has been too hard to track fractional
| ownership of an asset and calculate a share of profits.
| And most workers prefer cash up front rather than waiting
| for a payday which might not materialise for decades.
|
| I'm not going to go full blockchain/NFT on this idea. But
| it is easy to see how in the future a long-lived guild of
| tradespeople could build your house at a discounted price
| _now_ in return for a share of the sale profits in the
| future.
|
| I don't know if that's a good or bad thing though.
| nec4b wrote:
| And if the house depreciates, should the carpenter then
| help him with the mortgage payments?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Could you make the argument that the carpenter should be
| given the option to be paid in equity or in cash, if both
| parties agree to it? Is there any argument against giving
| people the option to choose the sort of compensation risk
| profile that works best for their individual situation?
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| No. The carpenter is entitled to pay for his work.
|
| He's not entitled to additional value the recipient of
| the work may or may not get from him completing the job,
| unless he negotiates that up front. It seems likely that
| no one in their right mind would agree to pay the
| carpenter profit sharing for every transaction that may
| occur from that building. They'd find another carpenter.
| runarberg wrote:
| This is a silly question, so silly in fact that I suspect
| it is only intended as reductio ad absurdum (which can be
| a fallacy if based on a false or inadequate premise).
|
| A carpenter is entitled to the fruits of their labor,
| which can adequately be provided with money.
| nec4b wrote:
| >> This is a silly question, so silly in fact that I
| suspect it is only intended as reductio ad absurdum
| (which can be a fallacy if based on a false or inadequate
| premise).
|
| I commend you for knowing logical fallacies. Though it
| would be even better if you were able to demonstrate
| those fallacies instead appealing to your own authority.
|
| >> A carpenter is entitled to the fruits of their labor,
| which can adequately be provided with money.
|
| I agree. Unfortunately, some people here claim developers
| working for google are entitled to their share of
| google's profits and carpenters working for said
| developers are not entitled to a share of profits from
| what those developers earn.
| runarberg wrote:
| There are plenty of examples of Reductio ad absurdum
| being a fallacy because of a false or inadequate premise.
| Zeno's paradox[1] being a famous one. The false premise
| being that you can actually add infinite number of times
| (modern mathematics take the limit as n approaches
| infinity).
|
| Here the prime candidate for the premise being wrong is
| to equate the work of carpenter working in their own
| enterprise at a project, to that of a google worker,
| working at Google's enterprise for any project their
| management tells them to.
|
| The former gets the fruit of their labor in full when the
| job is finished and paid for, the latter is suffering
| from a systematic exploitation as each time the stock
| goes up in price (or when dividends are issued) the
| shareholders get the fruits of the worker's labor, as
| opposed to the workers them selves.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In most cases, they do co-own the company, through stock
| and options grants. Particularly so for the early employees
| who are not replaceable.
|
| At Google's scale, everyone is replaceable, including Jeff
| Dean, Sundar Pichai, and everyone else who you think is
| "instrumental."
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I imagine the steelman version of the argument here is:
| yes, they do own part of the company, that portion of
| upside and control is so minuscule that it's almost
| insignificant. And thus we're back to needing unions to
| advocating on behalf of workers so that they get to own a
| bigger slice of the pie.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| That's the traditional Marxist view. It is not the
| traditional view.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Neither view will do.
|
| The company can't succeed without the workers. The company
| _also_ can 't succeed without capital. _Both_ deserve to
| get a cut of the rewards.
| edent wrote:
| Exactly.
| runarberg wrote:
| This neglects the reality that loans exist. In an ideal
| leftist world your local credit union redistributes
| wealth by collecting pepole's savings from the community
| and hands them out as loans for slightly higher interest
| rate. That interest rate is the "cut" of the rewards. If
| an enterprise goes bankrupt and is unable to pay back the
| loan, there is usually some kind of insurance the credit
| union has to prevent going under with it.
| runarberg wrote:
| This is a really good question, and there isn't a clear
| answer. I'm only answering this from the left point of view
| though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
|
| Traditional labor theory can make arguments for both, if you
| put in most of the work, then you deserve most of the
| benefits. However the case for equal pay is also solid,
| especially if the fruits of labor are abundant. How much does
| 5 million give you that 1 million doesn't, and why shouldn't
| you settle for 1 million if it means everyone would get more?
|
| But from a leftist perspective there is a fault in the
| question (but it is still a good question). Namely that you
| _sell_ the business. In an ideal left world, you wouldn't do
| that. The business belongs to the workers. If the workers can
| all form a consensus that it is time to leave the business
| and sell it to another set of workers--those that leave will
| be bought out basically--then this is a valid scenario.
| However if under a new leadership, some workers are receiving
| more benefits then others, then that is exploitation. I would
| say actually that the new leadership is exploiting their
| previous workforce by spending the money the workers created
| by buying a new business without their consent.
|
| So in short, you as the founder of the business that was
| bought, are enabling exploitation by selling it to a larger
| organization (unless you sell it to a worker owned and
| operated business).
| michaelchisari wrote:
| | _Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a
| nurse?_
|
| My tech salary, adjusted for inflation, is almost exactly what
| my RN mother was making when she was my age.
|
| Maybe our salaries aren't that extraordinary, they're just the
| only ones that have kept up with inflation.
|
| Don't feel guilty about a tech salary, feel angry others been
| left behind.
| black_13 wrote:
| subpixel wrote:
| Only a hundred years ago, a bunch of immigrants from places
| like Germany or Spain or Italy could arrive in New England
| (including New York City), perform manual labor, provide for
| their families on one income, and pool their additional money
| to _build whole buildings_ as social or fraternal clubs.
|
| That really puts things into perspective for me.
| Aunche wrote:
| That has more to do with the cost of building than a lack
| of pay. When you don't account for higher education,
| buildings, and healthcare, Americans are significantly
| richer than they were in the past. The problem is that
| politicians don't bother to address the underlying perverse
| incentives that are the root causes of these rising costs.
| They can win elections just fine by throwing money at the
| symptoms, even though they cause even more long-term pain.
| Until these root causes are addressed, most of the money
| squeezed from employers is simply going to go to the rent
| seekers in areas. The most clear example of this is tech
| salaries going to Bay Area landlords.
| todd8 wrote:
| I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Detroit. It was a place
| where a high school diploma could get you a secure job that
| would support a middle class family. It's all changed and
| Detroit is now half the size it once was while cities like
| Houston and Austin have grown tremendously.
|
| Why did that happen? Did corrupt unions kill the goose that
| laid the golden eggs? Or was it poor management of the
| automotive giants that allowed overseas companies to take
| market share. Did wages across the board fall behind
| inflation or was the automotive fundamentally changed by
| automation.
|
| I wish I understood what happened since I actually lived
| through that period.
| scarmig wrote:
| My sense is that German automotive companies dealt with
| Japanese competition better than American ones did,
| though I'd love for someone who knows about the history
| of the industry to chime in. Germany had strong unions
| and was a market leader then, similar to the US, so it
| suggests something was wrong with American automakers,
| labor unions, or the American government that led to the
| disaster.
|
| I wonder if Germany was more aggressive with tariffs to
| protect automakers from competition.
| Aunche wrote:
| > I wonder if Germany was more aggressive with tariffs to
| protect automakers from competition.
|
| It's somewhat the opposite actually. Germany taxes
| imported cars, but at least it still allows them. At the
| behest of automakers and unions, the US banned imported
| cars entirely in 1988. This allowed American automakers
| to profit despite stagnating. It wasn't until foreign
| subsidiaries started capturing market share from the US
| that American automakers were forced to innovate again.
| Swizec wrote:
| "provide for their families" was also a much lower standard
| than it is now. Back then having a good life (for
| immigrants at least) didn't mean a large house in the
| suburbs and 3 cars, it meant an entire family of 5 sharing
| 1 bedroom and walking everywhere. A pair of jeans was a
| multi generational investment. If your family could afford
| one bicycle, you were living large.
|
| This was unimaginable wealth compared to what was available
| back home. You had all 3 meals and even meat! Meat! The
| luxury.
|
| sauce: I'm from one of those European countries where 1 in
| 6 people emmigrated between 1880 and 1920. Literature from
| the time (that we read in school) contrasts the local
| situation with the riches of America as reported by people
| who sent letters.
| themitigating wrote:
| The quality of living a family in the suburbs has today
| is like what a rich person a hundred years ago would
| have.
|
| I see people with houses, multiple brand new cars, TVs in
| every room, and who take a vacation at least once a year
| complain about the economy their entire life.
| black_13 wrote:
| acdha wrote:
| Not even close. That rich person had servants, could go
| on lengthy vacations, etc. and most likely they had
| substantial passive income.
|
| The key thing to understand is the difference in how
| precarious those situations are: that affluent
| suburbanite has some shiny things but their cash flow is
| much higher than their wealth. A TV in every room is a
| rounding error on the $11k/year each of those new cars
| costs on average, and over the course of someone's
| working life that kind of thing makes a huge difference
| in net worth.
|
| The American healthcare system factors into this
| significantly: if your income depends on showing up to
| work daily, all of that can go away with a single health
| incident which leaves you unable to work. A truly rich
| person is considerably more likely to be able to ride
| something like that out.
|
| Similarly, retirement is a source of stress for many
| Americans. Having given mortgage processors and car
| companies millions of dollars over your life won't help
| you much then.
| RhysU wrote:
| > if your income depends on showing up to work daily, all
| of that can go away with a single health incident which
| leaves you unable to work.
|
| Yes, but there are long-term disability insurance
| policies available for purchase that largely remove that
| risk. It's a cost, of course.
|
| And, at least in the US, there are public programs that
| provide disability coverage already figured into one's
| taxes: https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/
| acdha wrote:
| Which somewhat reduce that risk. People on SSI are
| usually struggling, not affluent, and actually getting
| those benefits can be a struggle for people with
| conditions less clear cut than, say, losing limbs.
|
| I'm not saying they're not worth having but again that
| there's a big gap between someone being rich and a
| middle-class worker with decent active income.
| RhysU wrote:
| Definitely, the SSI application process can be onerous.
| It is meant for people who can do no job not just their
| pre-incident job.
|
| Definitely, SSI is not a full-time job income. That's why
| a worker with decent active income should look into
| private, long-term disability insurance.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The rich people of the past had no internet, cars, air
| travel, or much health care by modern standards. The
| average 2022 American is _vastly_ better off materially.
|
| What they _had_ was social status, and I think that 's
| more what you're talking about. Social status _is_
| incredibly important for humans, so I understand focusing
| on it. But since it 's pretty much a Zero Sum Game,
| nothing much changes there.
| acdha wrote:
| Commercial aviation was just getting started, yes, But a
| rich person in 1922 had luxury rail travel, boats, cars,
| horses, etc. Most importantly, they had time: air travel
| is important for most of us because having a paltry
| couple weeks per year means people try to do things like
| weekend trips which couldn't otherwise work. If you're
| truly rich, you have a lot more margin for having other
| people do the unpleasant trips for you or adjusting
| schedules to suit your comfort.
|
| Health care is the biggest differential - wealth can buy
| you out of a lot of lifestyle factors but a hundred years
| ago was just before the dawn of the antibiotic
| revolution. That part is true, but it isn't a factor of
| rising incomes and given how many Americans have stress,
| lower quality of life, and experience severe financial
| strain due to healthcare costs I don't think it's
| attributable to higher incomes.
| ben_w wrote:
| Minor quibble: they would've had cars 100 years ago. Bad
| ones, but they would've had them.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> The rich people of the past had no internet, cars, air
| travel, or much health care by modern standards. The
| average 2022 American is vastly better off materially._
|
| No, while rich people in the past had no iPhones or
| internet, they had something far more valuable than that:
| income generating businesses and appreciable assets like
| land, housing, gold, fine art, jewelery, etc.
|
| And no, the average American is vastly poorer now as
| housing, stable well paying jobs, healthcare and
| education, are now massively out of reach for the average
| joe than they were a few decades ago. Having iPhones and
| internet doesn't make up for these.
| ben_w wrote:
| Most, myself included, have a very limited understanding
| of the economy we are part of, so I'm not surprised by
| complaints. Every so often, someone making 2 or 3 times
| the national average income makes an ass of themselves on
| TV by claiming they're economically disadvantaged.
|
| In some senses, you don't even have to go to the suburbs
| to be unimaginably better off now than it was possible to
| be a century ago, because a century it was _not possible_
| , at any price, to make a weekend trip between New York
| and London; to be immune to the common forms of seasonal
| flu; to have a video call with someone; to get
| penicillin; 3D printers, and indeed all CNC machines more
| complicated than a loom controlled by punched cards,
| would've been fantasy; and so much more besides.
|
| TVs are cheap now. So are 3D printers, travel, and
| phones.
| RhysU wrote:
| > Every so often, someone making 2 or 3 times the
| national average income makes an ass of themselves on TV
| by claiming they're economically disadvantaged.
|
| Someone making 3X the US national median income is paying
| roughly the US national median income in
| federal/state/local taxes. They're paying a median
| working citizens' earnings in taxes.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> TVs are cheap now. So are 3D printers, travel, and
| phones._
|
| Being able to own disposable gadgets made in China
| doesn't make you rich. Those are not necessities. But you
| now what is? Housing, stable well paying jobs, healthcare
| and education , all of which are now massively out of
| reach for the average joe than they were a few decades
| ago.
| ben_w wrote:
| And a century ago? Because that's what this sub-thread is
| focusing on.
|
| And, like I said, much of what we now consider basic
| healthcare _had not yet been invented_.
|
| And even in the last decades, those cheap Chinese gadgets
| you're so dismissive of, they give access for free to not
| just k-12 but also university and post-graduate level
| educational courses and materials on topics which had not
| been invented then either.
|
| And the tech also lets more work remotely, changing the
| dynamics on housing.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The fact that some people don't know how well they have
| it is not evidence that everything is fine.
|
| Watch a few news reports on poverty in America and you
| will see that a decent percentage of working adults live
| with their entire family in a small cramped apartment,
| can't afford any vacation, and likely can't afford
| emergency medical care if it comes up.
|
| And even those people in the suburbs with all those TVs
| could have more financial security and work fewer hours
| if our economy was more fairly arranged.
| ben_w wrote:
| They didn't say "everything is fine". There's a lot wrong
| with everyone's economy from the perspective of "we work
| just as hard, why don't we get the same stuff?"
|
| However, I think you're misapprehending quite how much
| worse things were a century ago. Now the poor may
| struggle to afford a PET/CT/MRI/ultrasound scan, or a PCR
| test, or a dose of antibiotics, or a heart (lung, liver,
| kidney, bladder, pancreas, ovary, ...) transplant, but
| 100 years ago _they did not exist_. Diabetes only stopped
| being lethal just over 100 years ago, the first
| successful human treatment in the beginning of 1922.
| Smallpox no longer exists. And so on.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| No I'm not misapprehending how much worse things were a
| century ago. I simply believe that argument has no
| bearing on the discussion of a fair distribution of
| wealth in todays society. No one today lives 100 years
| ago as a matter of simple fact. Yes, we have antibiotics
| now, and that's great, but that has nothing to do with
| the fact that workers are producing vast amounts of
| wealth and receiving very little of that wealth as
| remuneration. We have cars today that make certain kinds
| of transportation easier, but that has nothing to do with
| a lack of maternity and paternity leave for new parents.
| We have cell phones so we can now talk to anyone in the
| world but that has nothing to do with the fact that
| business owners will selfishly decide to ship 1000 jobs
| overseas with no input from the workers who will be
| disenfranchised.
|
| I'm talking about unfair power imbalances today. This has
| nothing to do with the past.
| [deleted]
| ebiester wrote:
| The whole point of civilization is that generation to
| generation, our standards of living _should_ increase.
|
| Instead, they are regressing. If we are comparing to 100
| years ago, we sure should have been doing better! If we
| compare to 50 years ago, there are some key ways where we
| have regressed within the United States.
|
| The key here is that when we are speaking of standards of
| living, we are speaking within some narrow contexts. In
| the developing world, standards have blossomed. Within
| the United States, the GDP has continued to grow but the
| value hasn't spread equally.
|
| I can say that in the lower 50% of people in the US, the
| standard of living has markedly decreased. For 50-80%,
| it's mildly increased. For the top 20%, it's doing just
| fine, but it's never been a better time to be wealthy as
| the pathway for compounding growth on wealth has never
| had so many tools.
| klipt wrote:
| Being able to "walk everywhere" is itself a kind of
| luxury nowadays, because there are limited walkable
| cities in the US and they have all become very expensive.
|
| It's often actually much cheaper to live somewhere in the
| suburbs where you _can 't_ walk everywhere, because
| everything is designed around cars.
| KevinGlass wrote:
| The fact that everything is designed around cars is one
| of the invisible nooses around the neck of America. When
| you look around and notice that everything is covered in
| cars, that's hard to unnotice. All those cars, roads,
| parking lots, highways, box stores, mile of sewer and
| water pipe, cost a staggering amount and are going to
| start costing a lot more to maintain over the next decade
| as systems age out and need replacement or maintenance.
| Not to mention the cost of demolishing the country we
| spend the previous 300 years constructing. The vampiric
| system of automobilism has made everything much more
| expensive for everyone.
|
| Living in a semi-crowded city, near your family and
| friends, should be the default, cheap option. Instead
| we've wasted about 10 trillion dollars pave the entire
| continent. Possibly the most expensive mistake ever made
| in history.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Nobody wants to live in apartments. Maybe 20-something's
| with no prospect of family, but that's it.
| rexpop wrote:
| The post to which you're responding said nothing about
| apartments. Do you mind connecting a few dots for those
| of us less well-versed in the presumptions of your
| milieu?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| The post didn't explicitly say "apartment", but it said:
|
| > Living in a semi-crowded city, near your family and
| friends, should be the default, cheap option.
|
| What kind of dwelling, apart from apartments, are there
| in a "semi-crowded city"? They may not be high-rises, but
| even if it's a "multi-family house", it's still
| "apartments". There's only a (usually thin) wall
| separating your room from your neighbor's. This is one of
| the main aspects people typically hate about apartments.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Apartments are fine as long as they're _good_ apartments.
| Properly-built concrete walls completely mitigate the
| sound problem you mentioned below. In four years at my
| current place, I 've never heard a neighbor's voice from
| inside my apartment.
|
| Shitty slumlord apartments are what everyone wants to
| escape from, in my experience.
| rexpop wrote:
| It disturbs me that your comment is "greyed out,"
| whatever that means: you're speaking an obvious truth.
| The car-scale of American infrastructure is an impediment
| to physical health; it's an impediment to social capital,
| and therefore to democracy and to mental health, as well.
| It funnels us down restricted, commercial avenues--pun
| intended. It's physically dangerous, it's chemically
| toxic, it's ecologically destructive, and it's damned
| expensive to maintain!
|
| It's _obvious_ when I visit a city / countryside with
| poor transit and pedestrian infrastructure how much more
| I suffer. It's so damned obvious, it's the first thing
| that screams out to me right when I land / pull in / ride
| up.
|
| I can't understand what literate person would take issue
| with the core of your assertions.
| acchow wrote:
| Funny enough, having everything being designed around
| cars is actually more expensive for society on the whole.
| Walkable cities everywhere would actually be cheaper, and
| then it also wouldn't be a luxury.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Not only inflation but with debt.
|
| You can do extremely well with just a Bachelor's in CS.
| Professions like nursing, medicine, law, even business have
| had their earning potential sapped by larger and larger costs
| of education. And degrees past Bachelor's are less well
| supported by financial aid schemes.
| 33955985 wrote:
| If there is one "tech disruption" I hope actually sticks is
| the death of credentialism and the rise of proof of ability
| by doing. I have only a bachelor's in a liberal art(!) and
| working in tech has opened up so many doors for me, in
| teams where nobody cared where I went to school and my lack
| of a master's was met with curious shrugs.
| mkmk3 wrote:
| Why is sibling black_'s comment dead when they just provided
| an anecdote backing the parent comment? Or is the 1% talk
| controversial here?
| scruple wrote:
| That user is shadow banned.
| whiddershins wrote:
| This is an intrinsically Marxist framing.
|
| Even if inequality is rising, so is wealth overall. That's what
| Marx misestimated, although it wasn't his most grievous error.
|
| Poor people in the United States are far richer than rich
| people of 150 years ago.
|
| I am personally willing to accept the he existence of some
| billionaires if that's the price we pay for all this wonderful
| ness.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Poor people in the United States are far richer than rich
| people of 150 years ago.
|
| There is no material improvement in wealth over the past 20
| years, but inequality has grown.
|
| Wealth is produced by innovation, and greater concentratuon
| of wealth will lead to less innovation.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Compare to 30 years ago instead. Wealth in terms of being
| able to buy property is decreasing in many countries, which
| can be more significant than any increased ability to buy
| consumer gadgets (that will spy on you). And the countries
| with less wealth inequality don't in principle have less
| wealthy common people.
| mcguire wrote:
| On one hand, as long as your political opinions align with
| those of the ultra-wealthy then the inequality shouldn't
| bother you.
|
| On the other, high inequality is socially unstable because
| that is not generally the case.
| scarmig wrote:
| Marx didn't predict that capitalism wouldn't generate wealth.
| On the contrary, he believed it was the most economically
| revolutionary structure the world had yet devised and would
| create untold wealth. That's entirely consistent with the
| world we see.
|
| To be very specific, where he fell short was predicting a
| secular decline in the rate of profit. This wasn't a crazy
| error--most early economists also believed it--but it was
| very wrong, and his analysis of the failure of capitalism
| rests on that false premise.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| He's referring to marx belief in the "tendency for the rate
| of profit to fall" which is literally objectively wrong and
| the opposite of it is accepted within economics.
|
| This is the accepted explanation, which implies that the
| rate of profit _rises_ over time
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okishio%27s_theorem
|
| Btw, marx predicted that capitalism is inevitably destroyed
| due to tendency for the rate of profit to fall. I believe
| capitalism is the strongest that it's ever been right now.
| [deleted]
| scarmig wrote:
| I'd emphasize not only that there have been advances in
| theory but also in, more importantly, the empirical
| evidence. Marxism is a scientific theory in the sense
| that it can be falsified, and if you look at the rate of
| profit over time in most countries and periods, the
| evidence very strongly falsifies Marxism. Even if someone
| refuted Okishio, Marxism makes predictions about
| capitalist economics that simply aren't consistent with
| the world we see.
| quags wrote:
| For your three examples getting early into theses stocks, say
| stock compensation, or employee stock purchases would have
| produced outsized returns up until a few months ago. Much of
| the wealth is not from salary and simply stock compensation.
| Musk/bezos/zuck became billionaires on stock price alone. Early
| employees at these companies became millionaires many times
| over. But this is backwards looking and a survivor ship bias -
| for every one of these companies there companies who didn't
| make it big , or value went to zero.
| nec4b wrote:
| >> Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a
| nurse?
|
| You should ask your clients or employers.
| Aunche wrote:
| >when our industry is producing oligarchs like Musk,
| Zuckerberg, Bezos, it means that they are profiting from the
| things that tech workers produce
|
| The workers that built the foundations of these companies
| received stock options or RSUs over a decade ago and reached
| FATFIRE territory as well. Had they unionized, the companies
| they worked for wouldn't be able to reinvest as much money into
| growth, which would be compounded by a lack of external
| investors. In that case, they would lose to an unionized
| competitor.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Why pick on those 'oligarchs'?
|
| How about the Media moguls? A pretty good argument can be made
| that media oligarchs produce less value, but they dominate
| financial and political circles.
| moneywoes wrote:
| My worry is bringing unions in the US tech industry will just
| accelerate off shoring especially with super fast growing
| companies like Deel
|
| What are your thoughts?
| scruple wrote:
| Outsourcing technical work comes in waves. I've seen it up-
| close-and-personal 3 times. It's worked once and the magic
| that went into making it work (one of the founders moved back
| to his home country and started a consultancy that was
| contracted by the original business) in that specific
| instance isn't something that is easily replicated.
| devmor wrote:
| With the price of tech labor in places like Pakistan and
| India on the rise, that won't be sustainable for long.
| surement wrote:
| > Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a
| nurse?
|
| prices are largely based on supply and demand, not some vague
| notion of "deserve"
| jessehattabaugh wrote:
| > prices are largely based on supply and demand
|
| Then we'd better unionize before AI starts doing all the easy
| stuff
| fallingknife wrote:
| How would unionizing prevent you from being replaced by a
| machine? Striking isn't a threat when you not being there
| is what the company is going for anyway.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Automation is not instant, and if the clock is between
| "implement AI correctly to automate the work" and "run
| out of money because you have no workers" a strike is
| still effective.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Preserving inefficiencies for the sake of extracting money
| is called rent seeking.
| cycomanic wrote:
| If they would be based on supply and demand shouldn't nurses
| salaries gone through the roof recently? In every country I
| read the news shortage of nurses (and teachers to a lesser
| degree) is a huge topic and many places are badly
| understaffed. So why did their salaries not increase
| dramtically?
| willcipriano wrote:
| They did, in the US at least[0]. Just not for the saps who
| signaled any sort of loyalty to the company, those people
| got hosed. Nurses need to adopt the "f you pay me" attitude
| the hospital administration has, doing things like working
| without protective gear is a great way to tell your boss
| that you will accept anything he does to you.
|
| [0]https://khn.org/news/highly-paid-traveling-nurses-fill-
| staff...
| themitigating wrote:
| As opposed to John Deere or Exxon?
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Lots of American cope in this thread.
|
| Read this. This is a Swedish general office worker union. Yes
| even IT
|
| https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen
| Buttons840 wrote:
| As unions grow they begin to resemble that which they were meant
| to counter-balance. I've wondered, if a subgroup of union members
| are unhappy, can they organize? Can they form a union within the
| union?
|
| For example, if my workplace has an exclusive contract with one
| union, and me and my coworkers (who are all union members) don't
| believe the union is representing us, can we organize to take
| collective action against both the union and our actual employer?
|
| I known little about unions, so feel free to explain the basics
| if you need.
| wendyshu wrote:
| "The Economic Policy Institute is a 501 non-profit American,
| left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C."
| Zeyka wrote:
| I will never understand how some working class Americans can be
| against unions, maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed
| millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze
| money out of them? It's probably my European brain, but I cannot
| understand how someone, say Jerry, 60 year old factory worker
| from idaho, can be against unions...
| JasonFruit wrote:
| In my experience, what they oppose isn't unions as such, but
| _compulsory_ union membership. They consider that a union
| should arise from the expression of worker needs, and a union
| that they are forced to join and that exists whether they want
| it or not might lack incentives to represent their needs
| instead of the needs of the union. It 's kind of like the
| saying about organizations in general: eventually they come to
| serve the needs of the organization instead of the purpose for
| which they were originally created.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| That's been my experience as well. It's pure reactance
| psychology. From the first paragraph of the wiki page
|
| > Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers,
| persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate
| specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when an
| individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's
| choice of response and/or range of alternatives.
|
| When I think about the people who I know who are anti-union,
| they all have high reactance as a trait. If I were to try to
| change their mind, it would be to frame their non-union
| environment as more freedom-limiting than the unions
| alternative re: workplace democracy etc.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| You say "loves freedom" like it's a bad thing.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| "Loves freedom" isn't as clear of a maximum of utility as
| it's sometimes made out to be. Again, the association
| with those of high reactance strong.
|
| I'm fully aware that there will be attempts to naturalize
| "freedom loving." That's the interesting thing about
| psychology and I suppose in this case sociology,
| particulars are often universalized into a neurosis. It's
| funny how this pattern holds.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Let me put it in a less-fun way: "high reactance" is in
| this context just another way of saying "values freedom".
| Describing it using a wording that expresses
| psychologically-educated disapproval verbally
| pathologizes that preference, but it doesn't constitute a
| _supported_ value judgment. In neither of your comments
| have you offered any support, so just like my "loves
| freedom", it remains an empty weasel-word.
| i_am_toaster wrote:
| The lack of empathy and unfavorable labeling of opinions
| that differ from your own is not something you should get
| in the habit of.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Rather, it is precisely an empathic explanation. It
| attempts to find an underlying basis for such an opinion
| rather than writing it off as unfounded. People with high
| reactance have an emotional response when compelled to
| action and this emotional response is what I'm
| empathizing with.
|
| Any reading of my response as judgemental is a perversion
| of intention and I'd encourage anyone doing so to get
| curious and assume positive intent rather than reading it
| with malicious subtext. Something is only pathological if
| it negatively impacts someone's life.
| Zeyka wrote:
| I think that's fair enough, but it's not like workers in the
| USA have a lot of protections or are getting fairly
| compensated for their work. So unions, whether compulsory or
| not, still benefit them in one way or another.
| dantheman wrote:
| I mean Americans are paid far more highly than Europeans,
| so I don't see how this is correct.
| mftrhu wrote:
| Are they, _really?_
|
| How did they end up not having enough cash on hand to
| cover minor emergencies, then? How are they going
| bankrupt over healthcare costs - even when insured
| through their job - while having to worry about not being
| able to take a day off?
| Zeyka wrote:
| Only highly skilled workers are paid more. Compare fast
| food workers and you'll see what I'm talking about.
| nverno wrote:
| This isn't just uniformly true, though. As a worker you may
| be better off without the union you're a part of- it
| depends as much on the union as the company.
| nverno wrote:
| > compulsory union membership
|
| Yea, it can be frustrating be barred from jobs, like
| construction, being a non-member, or being forced to pay
| union dues to a union you feel is doing nothing for you.
|
| Small, company-sized unions have always been a lot more
| appealing to me than the huge behemoths the US currently has.
| swearwolf wrote:
| When I was younger, I worked in the theater industry. We
| all knew that the IATSE stage hands were making great
| wages, but the options we had to join were:
|
| 1.) A grueling apprenticeship period in which you would
| work very long hours for very little pay. I could be wrong
| but I think this was a several year long process.
|
| 2.) You could skip that process if you were vouched for by
| an existing union member. In practice, this often meant
| that membership was passed down through families.
|
| I understand that it's similar for firefighters.
| omnibrain wrote:
| I think that's part of the problem. In germany for example,
| we have Unions and we have working councils in the
| companies. And while unions are "just" associations/clubs
| working councils are are regulated by laws and get elected
| by the workers of the company. Of course there is some
| realtionship, but it is not unheard of, that in a working
| council are members from more than one union (though
| usually only one has negotiating powers for tariffs, but
| that's another topic, because usually unions negotiate with
| associations of companies for the whole sector. And those
| unions without negotiating power are sometimes not even
| considered real unions...), and even independent members.
| defphysics wrote:
| > see themselves as embarrassed millionaires
|
| I see this "embarrassed millionaires" line a lot. It seems
| unbelievably cynical. Do you really think a meaningful fraction
| of workers are thinking "I'll oppose unions because even though
| I'm hurting workers, it'll be good for me when I'm rich"?
| danaris wrote:
| It's rarely a specific and conscious line of thought during
| the decision-making process. The more common case is making
| the working class _feel_ like they 're "just like" the
| wealthy--playing on the narrative that "anyone can get rich
| in America"--and then selling them on policies that actively
| work against their own interests, and for the interests of
| the wealthy. This step often looks like talking about things
| that would primarily affect the very wealthy as if they would
| hurt everyone. Things like "taxation is theft", "increasing
| taxes punishes success", "government small enough to drown in
| a bathtub", etc.
| slater- wrote:
| as we say in america when someone is right about something, "i
| think you just hit the nail on the head."
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I will never understand how some working class Americans can
| be against unions
|
| It seems as though decades of corporate puppets have done a
| wonderful job of convincing the blue-collar worker that unions
| are corrupt and exist solely to milk worker's dues.
|
| I don't understand it either.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Because some people take pride in their work, and being
| essentially forced to do a bad job hurts them psychologically.
|
| I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and
| then see the fruits of that hard work. I take immense pride in
| that, and seeing the output in some sense _is_ a big part of
| the payment.
|
| Unions don't allow for this attitude, at least none of the ones
| that I have ever interacted with. They're not pro worker,
| they're anti work. These people seem to believe that work is
| bad for workers.
|
| So some people don't like unions. I don't like unions.
| Devasta wrote:
| > I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them,
| and then see the fruits of that hard work.
|
| You might see the fruits of your hard work, but it's your
| boss who reaps them.
| [deleted]
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Hypothesis #1: European unions aren't like American unions in
| this way: they are far less oppositional to the objectives of
| the companies.
|
| Hypothesis #2: This is a result of European unions having an
| origin as trade guilds whereas American unions have an origin
| as political organizers.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| As a Swede who emigrated to the US:
|
| # 1: Swedish unions are very different from US ones. They
| understand their companies and the country needs to be
| competitive on the world market. I have my problems with
| their power and policies, but they're _vastly_ better for
| society than the US version.
|
| # 2: The Swedish unions _formed_ the Social Democratic
| party, that 's been the main political power center of the
| country for a century. Don't know what relations they may
| have had with guilds in the 1800s.
| jltsiren wrote:
| European unions have their roots in revolutionary
| communism. They then evolved towards social democracy,
| which is effectively a compromise between socialism and
| capitalism. This social compromise, where the unions
| accepted market economy and private property and the
| employers accepted moderate unions, made the unions what
| they are today.
|
| American unions evolved in another direction. Because there
| was no serious risk of a communist revolution, the
| employers had no need to comromise. Both the employers and
| the unions remain more confrontational than in Europe.
| softfalcon wrote:
| I find this is true for some unions but not all.
|
| We have a union at my company and it's for our creative
| writing and video production folks. We're in the media space.
| These are some of the most effective and driven people I've
| met or had the privilege of working for.
|
| People being lazy (or not) and wanting to do a good job (or
| not) is mutually exclusive of whether they are in a union (or
| not).
|
| I do see why you would think this. Many media outlets and
| corporations spend lots of time making sure everyone thinks
| unions are just for lazy people. That's not true, but after
| decades, many people think this now.
| ljw1001 wrote:
| I think your characterization of unions is a propaganda
| driven falsehood, and your argument ignores the fact that
| Most people see less and less of the fruits of their labor.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| awinder wrote:
| You're:
|
| 1. Not actually detailing your life experience
|
| 2. Repeating tropes and stawmanning arguments that others
| aren't making
|
| 3. Framing people you don't agree with as "PMC people",
| i.e. you're not engaging with their arguments
|
| Your final sentence applies in spades to how you're
| arguing across the thread. Ridiculous.
| haberman wrote:
| Please tell me, how is one supposed to engage with the
| "argument" that their personal experience and resulting
| belief is a "propaganda driven falsehood." That's not an
| argument, it is pure name calling, and doesn't even make
| sense as this person seems to be basing their beliefs on
| direct experience from their own professional life.
| awinder wrote:
| By:
|
| 1. Not labeling people who disagree with you as "part of
| a professional managerial class" / people who don't want
| to work (propaganda) 2. Actually citing personal
| experience (just saying you have personal experience
| isn't a debate/argument)
| haberman wrote:
| > Not labeling people who disagree with you as "part of a
| professional managerial class" / people who don't want to
| work (propaganda)
|
| I see, you get to label others with pejoratives like
| "propaganda", but others are not allowed to respond in
| kind with labels of their own. Seems a bit one-sided.
| sopooneo wrote:
| Does PMC stand for "Professional Managerial Class"?
| lilactown wrote:
| My dad and my grandpa worked for unions for decades, and
| they are the hardest working people I know and take great
| pride in that.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Good! I'm not saying you _cant_ be a hard worker and also
| in a union, or even that a pro work union couldn't exist.
|
| I'm saying my experience with unions is that they're anti
| work, and pro PMC.
| CPLX wrote:
| > I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them,
| and then see the fruits of that hard work.
|
| Perhaps you could serve as an example and role model that
| could inspire union members like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady
| to work harder.
| nineplay wrote:
| I used to work with UAW in the 90s and it was excruciating.
| I'd be on the floor with one of our machines and I wasn't
| allowed to even take a panel off with a screwdriver. There
| was one guy whose job allowed him to unscrew the panel and he
| was somewhere else, or on a smoke break. I spent so much time
| sitting around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for this or that
| person. It was the opposite of having a productive day, I'd
| never want to work like that.
| Aunche wrote:
| A lot of people have had bad experience with unions. Often
| times, it's only people with high seniority that see the most
| benefit from unions. This is why the railroad unions negotiated
| for more pay instead of paid sick days. Pension payouts are
| based on the average of the highest 60 paying months. Senior
| employees who are due to retire in a few years just need bear a
| few more tough years to enjoy their significantly fatter
| pensions.
| danaris wrote:
| Have they really? _Personal_ bad experiences?
|
| Or is this just the prevailing narrative that's been sold to
| us over the past 30-50 years, and there are too few _actual_
| unions and union jobs left to effectively counter it?
| surement wrote:
| > maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires
| that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of
| them?
|
| What a lazy take. Unions only protect their current members.
| It's common for companies to hire fewer people or hire more
| people at only part time schedules because full time employees
| are required to cost exaggeratedly more or are harder to fire
| due to union contracts. What organization represents the people
| who are unemployed or underemployed because of unions? These
| people are much worse off than if the unions didn't exist.
| stri8ed wrote:
| For the same reason that people oppose monopolies. Unions are
| effectively a monopoly on the labor market.
| missedthecue wrote:
| With specific exemption from federal anti trust legislation.
| lisper wrote:
| Two big factors:
|
| 1. American capitalists have waged a very effective propaganda
| campaign against unions and
|
| 2. American unions have had a history of corruption. (Or maybe
| I just think that because I've been taken in by the propaganda
| campaign.)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| as an American, my casual observation is that "real,
| political Leftists in Unions of America" were pushed out by
| any means (media,legal pressure,illegal intimidation and
| harassment), leaving the far-Right shady people to run them
| (literally Mafia in many locations, and with the Teamsters).
| This is a political trade-off paralleling other anti-
| Communist countries. USA Americans do not have a real
| impression of the horrific power struggles that can occur
| within a labor & tax system, and as these comments show, also
| do not have a real impression of a working, daily Union doing
| it's job without drama.
| mgraf1 wrote:
| I'm curious what you mean when you say "leaving the far-
| Right shady people to run them (literally Mafia in many
| locations, and with the Teamsters)". How are you defining
| "far-right" in this context?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| sustained, organized indentured servitude was a fact of
| work life in many populated parts of the world for more
| than a thousand years, and is found today in most
| military structures, hotels and casinos, for example.
| Here, a working definition of "far-Right" is, descendants
| of those that enable hierarchical work structures
| parallel to indentured work, with control & reward
| structures associated with that.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Because all they see is "that union is taking money out of my
| pay check!" and they don't see the positives.
|
| And there actually are bad unions. I worked in a casino and out
| union was a non-striking union so even if the casino gave use
| some shitty contract we weren't able to strike. So what was the
| point?
| Zeyka wrote:
| Replace the word unions with cops (in the us) and then see if
| you come to the conclusion that there should be no cops
| because the system isn't working right now. The answer is
| most likely "No, of course not". So why do so many come to
| the conclusion that since unions aren't working well right
| now, you should just get rid of them altogether?
| [deleted]
| jasode wrote:
| _> It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how
| someone [...] can be against unions..._
|
| America unions are structured differently from Europe and some
| can become as distrusted by the workers as the corporation.
|
| Your viewpoint is common but it's based on the mental model of
| _" Unions are good. Period end of story."_
|
| But for voters like your proverbial Jerry against unions, the
| mental model is more about _tradeoffs_ like this, _" the
| proposed union by these particular set of organizers has made
| some promises and wants to charge me $$$ per year to negotiate
| with the company. Things may turn out better -- or they may
| turn out worse (e.g. no job)."_
|
| As an example, the Amazon union vote in Alabama failed and many
| blamed Amazon propaganda. No doubt that Amazon crafted many
| negative messages about unions. But outsiders forget that many
| voters _had older relatives from Alabama coal mines_ telling
| them that _" the union just took our dues money and didn't do
| shit for us"_.
|
| How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned union
| coal miners spreading negative information like that? These are
| the kinds of scenarios Europeans are unfamiliar with.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned
| union coal miners spreading negative information like that?
|
| Because coal mining is in no way the same as Amazon's retail
| business? Now, I will say, some of these folks are beyond
| hope. In an energy transition documentary done by one of the
| HGTV property brothers, they interview a coal miner dying of
| black lung in Appalachia, and they believe that's the job
| their kids and grandkids should do versus renewables or "new
| tech" even when considering there are other options
| available. [1] Belief systems are deeply ingrained and have
| defense mechanisms. Persuade the open minded whenever
| possible, of course, but ignore those who aren't. The effort
| is better spent elsewhere. As Max Planck said, "a new
| scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
| and making them see the light, but rather because its
| opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar
| with it." Same deal.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/MgRa5spkfXw
| argiopetech wrote:
| Both involve manual labor acquiring, packing, and shipping
| valuable good for use by others; in enclosed areas,
| surrounded by large, dangerous equipment; where workers are
| paid below the perceived value of the position, and with
| top management who grow richer daily while ignoring the
| plight of the "little man"...
|
| I'd rather work in the warehouse, personally, but I can
| certainly see how the positions are analogous to the level
| we could compare expected results of a union.
| zip1234 wrote:
| There are also public sector unions which appear to only
| serve a special interest group at the expense of everyone
| else. Teacher unions are an example--they appear to protect
| bad teachers, stifle innovation, and it isn't even clear that
| they are great at getting pay for teachers.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _unions which appear to only serve a special interest
| group at the expense of everyone else_
|
| I mean, the _intended purpose_ of unions is to serve their
| members, at the expense of non members.
| ubercore wrote:
| Not necessarily. As I understand it, in the Nordics,
| employment conditions and benefits are protected by
| unions, regardless of an individual's membership.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I see how you read it that way, but I meant non members
| in a wider sense, as in the employer, and the general
| public.
| britch wrote:
| Mind elaborating on what you mean by innovation?
|
| Is it new/unique curriculum? Something else?
| [deleted]
| wallawe wrote:
| If this is your take, you're not being honest about the
| downsides of unions.
|
| Here is a list of reasons for not wanting a union[1]:
|
| - I want my underperforming colleagues to be fired quickly.
| It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free
| riding off their colleagues' (my) effort, and it leads to
| ineffective orgs.
|
| - I don't want seniority or rank to be rewarded. It's unfair to
| young people (me) who are more competent and ambitious, and it
| leads to ineffective orgs.
|
| - I want to negotiate individually because I believe I will
| make more money as an outperformer. I don't want a centralized
| handicapper to blunt my compensation.
|
| - I don't like that unions are rent seeking in nature.
|
| - I don't like that unions often are exploited by organized
| crime.
|
| - I don't like that unions interfere in the broader political
| process and democracy via activism and political pressure (e.g
| look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be going to
| everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).
|
| - I think people should be free to organize, but I don't like
| that the state grants special asymmetric powers to unions.
|
| - I don't like especially public sector unions that I believe
| are doing significant damage to society broadly. For example
| police unions that shielded Chauvin after a large number of
| complaints.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28958674
| ubercore wrote:
| I think you have a very US-centric lens on unions. In the
| Nordic countries, for example, unions operate entirely
| differently. So you need to be clear where your points come
| from.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > So you need to be clear where your points come from
|
| They were responding to a post specifically asking about
| Americans' feelings toward unions. That made it pretty
| clear to me where his points were coming from.
|
| If they were responding from Finland I'd be a little
| confused why they were responding at all.
| ubercore wrote:
| Because Finland is a great example of unions working for
| the benefit of employees? Why are we constrained to only
| discussing how (some, not all) unions are in the US?
| jasode wrote:
| _> Why are we constrained to only discussing how (some,
| not all) unions are in the US?_
|
| In general, nobody is constrained to just discussing USA
| unions but _the particular subthread_ [1] that you're in
| which was started by gp (Zeyka) was asking specifically
| about America. And that's probably because this thread's
| article is about American unions.
|
| That's why your clarification (to poster wallawe) was
| perceived as redundant and out of place.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34028480
| Jensson wrote:
| Because in USA every union is a battle. There isn't much
| to talk about with respect to Scandinavian unions, if you
| don't want to be in one just don't be, if you want to be
| in one just join, it is much simpler, while in USA one
| side forces the other side to take the same route, so you
| can't choose union other votes for what union you are in
| etc.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| The above comment was clearly in response to another
| comment about how Americans feel about unions, thus it is
| obvious it was looking at American unions.
| winkeltripel wrote:
| I don't think you quite understand how the unions work.
|
| -in most cases, the employer is able to fire with cause. The
| union keeps the employer from using layoffs as a weapon.
|
| - pay scales reward loyalty and keeps the workplace stable.
|
| - without the union, you have almost no bargaining power. The
| union usually gets a better rate for everyone than any one
| person could have negotiated. This is in fact the point of
| collective bargaining. Even the presence of a union job site
| can lift wages across industries. I see this in Oshawa, where
| the CAW jobs making car bits helps waitresses and sales
| associates draw higher wages.
|
| -the employer is rent-seeking on their capital. The union
| balances this.
|
| -unions are not criminal organizations. The teamsters have
| done some things in the past. If we didn't have so much union
| busting, there would be more unions competing for workplaces,
| and this would drive bad unions out of business.
|
| -unions are political, and need legal protections for
| workers. Tesla will eventually have to deal with a union or
| treat their workers better than the UAW.
|
| -I don't like that the state grants asymmetric privileges to
| the employer class, like never prosecuting white collar
| crimes, and not clawing back exec severances during
| bankruptcy, and giving them a lower tax rate than their
| employees.
|
| -there are many things wrong with policing in the us, but all
| could be fixed with fedral legislation. The unions are
| aligned with their membership, and doing great work. The
| wider outcomes are horrible, but that's a good union doing
| good work.
| mcguire wrote:
| You forgot the part where they are all founded on organized
| crime.
|
| /s
| dehrmann wrote:
| > pay scales reward loyalty and keeps the workplace stable.
|
| The tech industry has arguably developed quickly because
| people move around a lot, taking best practices with them.
| Workplace stability might appear locally great, but it
| hurts the industry as a whole.
| mcguire wrote:
| The tech industry is flooded with money, but is
| enormously inefficient. How many projects are you
| familiar with that got trashed, often after key people
| moved on?
| tgv wrote:
| tldr: I think I can get more money, and screw the rest.
|
| You've proven the point about inequality.
| [deleted]
| joxel wrote:
| joshlemer wrote:
| Thank you for articulating this so well!
| underbrush wrote:
| Take your reasons, which are really more opinions, and insert
| "free speech" instead of "unions" (after the appropriate
| changes) and you might understand why people would disagree.
| leereeves wrote:
| How does "free speech" reward seniority, protect
| underperforming colleagues, prevent negotiating
| individually, etc?
| underbrush wrote:
| That is why I said make the appropriate changes.
|
| - I don't want free speech because it is unfair to award
| lazy thinking free riding off established publications.
|
| - I don't want free speech because it is often exploited
| by terrorists.
|
| - I think people should be free to say things but I don't
| think it should grant them special protection from the
| government.
|
| etc.
|
| It isn't an exact comparison but that also isn't the
| point.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| You're right, it's not a comparison at all.
| underbrush wrote:
| It is it just isn't an exact comparison which is also
| what I said.
| otikik wrote:
| > It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and
| free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort
|
| With your unionized coworkers that might be a _possibility_.
| With the business owners that's a _certainty_. Do you feel
| differently about these two groups of people?
| [deleted]
| onetimeusename wrote:
| The way that many union bosses have become part of the
| political class is something I rarely see discussed when
| talking about union benefits. The bosses seem to be well
| removed from the rank and file members and can have
| completely different goals and priorities. The definition of
| a union does not really seem like it should have anything to
| do with politics either. I am sure that people will defend
| union bosses by pointing out that union leadership jobs have
| a different nature than what the members do which may be so.
| But I would like to point out that it seems pretty rarely
| people talk about exploitation and corruption of and by union
| bosses themselves as if this can't possibly exist. I would
| argue there is potential for union leadership to be
| exploitative of union members and this is worth discussing.
| ceres wrote:
| All great points. To add: As someone who's worked blue collar
| jobs, it is all too common for unions to protect assholes
| from getting fired. This leads to a hostile work environment
| created by the "high seniority" workers.
|
| Something I don't like whenever these discussions come up is
| the condescending tone, from white collar workers. "Don't
| these poor people know what's good for them????"
|
| Working class people are capable of thinking for themselves
| and it's not that uncommon for people to move from a union
| shop to a non-union shop due to the reasons outlined above.
| ditonal wrote:
| Poor people? I think rich techies are crazy - or rather,
| badly misinformed- not to start a union.
|
| Exhibit A of poorly informed: grandparent poster seriously
| thinking he has more individual bargaining power against
| trillion dollar corporations than a collective bargaining
| agreement would.
|
| Exhibit B: grandparent poster thinking collective
| bargaining _must_ entail many aspects like seniority based
| compensation that are totally optional.
|
| Tom Brady is in the NFL players association. Tom Cruise is
| in the Screen Actors guild. Naive techies think being good
| at leetcode hard gives them bargaining power. A lot of ex
| Tweeps are getting a wake up call.
|
| The only reason techies had the illusion of negotiation
| leverage is that they were generating such absurdly high
| revenue for their employer, the slice they got seemed huge
| compared to the rest of the country's gutted middle class.
| Factor in inflation, housing, and that Wall St is now
| gunning hard to bring tech compensation down, and you'll
| realize techies are the last gasp of Americas dying middle
| class, and that really pisses off activist hedge funds .
| See Elliott Managements recent takeover of Pinterest so
| they could "re-level" employees.
|
| Read the emails between Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin w.r.t
| high tech class action lawsuit. Read about Google hiring
| union busting consultant firms.
|
| If unions didn't work, tech execs wouldn't be so terrified
| of them.
|
| Yes, poor people should also unionize. And yes,
| unfortunately a lot of their options are as broken and
| corrupt as their employers.
|
| That doesn't change the fundamental fact that collective
| bargaining is the _only_ answer .
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| > Read the emails between Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin
| w.r.t high tech class action lawsuit. Read about Google
| hiring union busting consultant firms.
|
| Worse still is that these firms have been caught
| collectively bargaining against workers through illegal
| secretive non-compete clauses. Wage suppression has been
| going on for years, even while these companies have been
| at the very top of thriving businesses.
|
| It's simply not a question of affordability. These
| companies did it because they could.
|
| I'd also like to point out that much of the union
| activity of a hundred years ago was also about poor
| working conditions, and not just compensation. Much of
| that was quelled by increasing government regulations
| that protected workers against exploitation. Is the
| government adequately performing this job?
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| All the things you dislike about unionized working
| environments are things that can go wrong in any working
| environment. If we had more unions, you'd have more of a
| choice, instead of the situation now where only the most
| corrupt survive.
| flanflan wrote:
| seneca wrote:
| Please don't post lazy throw away comments like this here.
| civopsec wrote:
| Seneca loquitur et audimus.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| > - (e.g look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be
| going to everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).
|
| If you mean the federal tax credit, it was the OLD one that
| stopped going to Tesla (due to the per-model caps in place;
| caps that any competitor could also reach after enough sales,
| mind you). The new credit that was signed into law this year
| does not exclude Tesla (instead, it excludes cars
| manufactured overseas).
| otikik wrote:
| It has been demonized and propagandized against by people with
| the deepest pockets in the world, and it's working in some
| cases.
| Zeyka wrote:
| A quick look at the comments on here answers that pretty
| well... It's quite sad that those that are against unions for
| various reasons are also against any changes to them. It just
| seems like bad faith.
| musictubes wrote:
| You say you will never understand why some American working
| class workers oppose unions. Well then I guess you will need be
| able to convince them otherwise. If your starting point is that
| the union experience is obviously a good one and you must be
| stupid to not see that, you have lost any chance of a serious
| conversation. People have reasons for feeling the way they do.
| Dismissing them as falling for propaganda is once again just
| calling them stupid.
|
| I'm an American and I admit to having a very negative view of
| modern unions. When the word union comes up I immediately think
| of:
|
| 1) The Teamsters and their ties to organized crime 2) Police
| unions that shield officers from consequences 3) Teacher unions
| that prevent awful teachers from being fired 4) Ridiculous
| rules around duties on film/theater sets 5) The UAW is seen by
| many former workers as letting them down. Many other people
| feel the UAW bears some responsibilities for plant closures. 6)
| As supermarkets in my area started to unionize the service
| noticeably suffered. 7) Several friends were Verizon workers
| and felt that they were screwed by their union. 8) It is common
| for unions to fund candidates that many workers do not like.
|
| If someone like myself has a negative view of unions it is up
| to people like yourself to change that perception if you want
| unions to gain traction in the US. Distrust of unions in the US
| are not always (usually?) driven by ignorance or propaganda.
| Unions themselves have done a very good job of alienating
| workers.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Here is how Swedish unions work :)
|
| Maybe urs are just shit :)
|
| https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen
| mikem170 wrote:
| > I will never understand how some working class Americans can
| be against unions
|
| I've wondered if this is because unions in the U.S. are
| considerably different than unions in other places?
|
| This was an interesting article [0] I bumped into titled
| "Europe could have the secret to saving America's unions".
|
| It said that in the U.S. unionization happens at the enterprise
| level, leaving unionized companies at a disadvantage relative
| to their competitors, so individual companies are very much
| incentivized to fight against unionization. In other countries
| when a certain amount of workers call for unionization
| negotiations happen between the union and a federation
| representing all employers in the sector, and the entire sector
| unionizes at once, not individual companies.
|
| The article also talked about employees receiving benefits from
| their unions in some (fewer) countries, like unemployment
| insurance, instead of from the government. This incentives
| workers to join the union and pay union dues, instead of
| forcing them to do so. The idea was thrown out there that
| things like health care and retirement plans could also be
| included with union dues for people in gig-work jobs that would
| otherwise not receive these benefits.
|
| I'd add that the article didn't address a concern many in the
| U.S. have about unions protecting under-performing workers, to
| the detriment of others. I've heard that this is different in
| other countries, at least to a point, but the article did not
| get into this. Also in the U.S. there have been a lot of
| corrupt unions, and public employee unions that receive
| (expensive) preferential treatment by law, I don't know if
| these problems exist in other countries.
|
| [0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u...
| Zeyka wrote:
| Thanks for the interesting read, I think that US unions
| should definitely change, and this is still in line with my
| original comment, because of course you can dislike the way
| unions work right now, but still be pro-union in the long
| term.
|
| Opposing unions is just going to lead to no changes on the
| union side and it's going to let the companies be as harsh on
| workers as they want, even on the "hard workers", because in
| the end, companies just care about the value that you are
| producing, not what you once produced. If you aren't valuable
| now, they'll just throw you out.
|
| All the comments on here that say "well i don't want my lazy
| coworker to get paid more" highlight how well the
| "hustle"/"grind" and meritocracy propaganda worked on US
| workers. The other type of comments that talk about the bad
| side of unions just seem like bad faith arguments, It's just
| like the police violence in the US, there are a lot of bad
| actors and the system is ultimately flawed, but does that
| mean that there should be no police? No, of course not, so
| why is that in this context, they are actively against unions
| and against workers right? It quite literally makes no sense,
| but then again we're talking about the USA here so the notion
| of logic just goes out of the window.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I think it in part comes from being trained generation after
| generation that if I work harder than you, I deserve more than
| you. So if people want to make things more equal, I will have
| worked so hard for nothing and that makes me unhappy.
|
| * Note: I used "I", but I don't personally feel this way. If I
| found out a fast food worker made more than me as an engineer,
| I wouldn't care. In some ways they work harder. Also, I don't
| think CEOs bring as much worth to a company as engineers do and
| they make way more, so...
| 2devnull wrote:
| You don't know many working class Americans or you could ask
| them. I do and have and they report exploitation and misaligned
| incentives. Unions are like corporations, they can have poor
| leadership with goals that are incongruous with the goals of
| the members. Union dues can feel like you pay a lot of your
| hard earned cash to just have your money siphoned off to a
| politicians that literally hate you. But usually they have
| agreed that in general it's good that unions exist. Better to
| have them around than to not have them, in the abstract.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Ironically you're being downvoted by the same folks who would
| benefit from unions. American Twitter employees, for instance,
| would have done a lot better with European labor protections.
| European Twitter employees probably have a sizable comeuppance
| on the horizon.
| Zeyka wrote:
| Exactly, and I'm not trying to devalue their beliefs, I'm
| just trying to understand how they can be against something
| that would benefit them.
| mhb wrote:
| Is it that hard to understand that someone might be in
| favor of something in principle, but object to its
| particular implementation? Or that someone could act
| against their own self-interest because of a belief in a
| broader principle? Maybe everyone's motivation isn't to
| blindly follow their own micro-self-interest.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| Any time I hear the claim that people are against their
| best interests it does not quite make sense to me. My own
| observation leads me to believe that everyone is good at
| optimizing for their own priorities.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| It won't benefit them. Maybe you should try to understand
| their perspective from a place of you being ignorant of the
| subject and wrong about unions.
| bombolo wrote:
| They think "oh no my lazy coworkers might get a bigger
| bonus!" rather than realising that their boss is the former
| lazy coworker.
|
| Basically the american idea that deserving people (aka
| myself) will magically prevail.
| ww-picard-do wrote:
| You are being very patronizing. Other people in this
| thread have given reasonable explanations for not liking
| unions.
|
| You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about
| it is rude.
| bombolo wrote:
| Like the one "office workers don't need unions because
| meritocracy"... if you think that's reasonable... I can
| only think of it as reasonable if you start from made up
| facts to reach the conclusion.
| ww-picard-do wrote:
| I never said that just like no one said "oh no my lazy
| coworkers might get a bigger bonus!". You seem to insist
| on mischaracterizing what people say. Why?
| Zeyka wrote:
| But that's the thing, meritocracy isn't a thing, and
| saying no to more protections (from unions or from pro-
| worker laws) just doesn't make sense. Granted there was
| some things I didn't know about how unions worked in the
| US, which I learned more about in this thread, but the
| same questions remain for pro worker and worker
| protection laws, why do Americans oppose them so much.
| yucky wrote:
| > meritocracy isn't a thing
|
| One of many examples I can give to disprove this as I'm
| sitting here watching Croatia & Morocco in the World Cup,
| is looking at some of the contracts some of these players
| get from their clubs. Wide disparity and definitely seems
| to be based on a meritocracy. Taken further, why are none
| of these fans in the stands, many of whom who also play
| for fun not equally compensated or even compensated at
| all? After all, they can kick a ball too.
|
| So now that we've established that meritocracy is
| obviously a real thing, we have to ask what evidence you
| have that a meritocracy wouldn't exist in other fields,
| like programming for instance.
| bombolo wrote:
| > So now that we've established that meritocracy is
| obviously a real thing
|
| We have? Because... a football match was played? What did
| it prove exactly?
| danaris wrote:
| > meritocracy isn't a thing, and saying no to more
| protections (from unions or from pro-worker laws) just
| doesn't make sense
|
| You know that, and I know that, but the right wing has
| been pushing anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate
| propaganda for several decades now. That propaganda also
| dovetails with the preexisting Protestant work ethic and
| labor theory of value that have been pretty solidly in
| the American consciousness since...well, basically before
| its founding as a country.
|
| All that combined means that for people who aren't raised
| in a progressive, pro-union environment, and who don't
| encounter such an environment until their belief systems
| are fairly well-established, the default background noise
| is pretty much "Unions? Why would you need that, you
| pansy? Real Men are islands unto themselves, work hard,
| and are paid exactly what they're worth for that work.
| That's how you know the poor deserve to be poor!"
| formercoder wrote:
| I really don't understand the push for white collar tech
| employees to be in unions. It's my understanding that in most
| union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on
| time in role, not performance. I try and excel in my role and
| others are less interested in doing so. I should be promoted
| faster and compensated higher.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Generally the people who are advocating for a union are
| doing it to level the playing field for themselves against
| you.
| bombolo wrote:
| Yes for example an immigrant that is under threat of
| being deported might want a more level playing field.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Historically, unions in the United States have been
| strongly anti-immigrant because they were seen as
| competitors who lowered wages. Anyone who has been on HN
| long enough has seen the undercurrent of anti-H-1B
| sentiment whenever the topic comes up and a union would
| bring that nastiness and racism out to center stage.
|
| No, no immigrants in tech are going to want to vote for a
| union because a lot of its members think immigrants are
| part of the playing field that needs to be "leveled".
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's not racism to oppose policies that lower my salary
| dantheman wrote:
| Unions are anti-immigrant.
| bombolo wrote:
| And companies are pro-exploitation-of-immigrants... and
| not very pro-immigrants.
| wpietri wrote:
| Do you have any current data on that? I think it was true
| of the "Reagan Democrat" variety of union worker in the
| 1980s, but I suspect it's an outdated stereotype now. For
| example, SEIU, one of America's largest unions,
| represents a lot of immigrants and is strongly pro-
| immigrant: https://www.seiu.org/justice-for-immigrants/
| missedthecue wrote:
| It's not really true any longer, but it was at one point.
| The head of the AFL-CIO admits here that unions were
| strongly anti immigration for decades. Only in the past
| few years have they changed their official opinion.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2013/02/05/171175054/how-the-labor-
| movem...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The only reason blue collar workers' unions changed their
| tune is because they were unable to stop the flow of
| illegal immigration. On the other hand, restricting H-1Bs
| and green cards is a battle that many think they can win.
| wpietri wrote:
| It is disappointing to ask for data and get more
| unsubstantiated opinion.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _It's my understanding that in most union jobs,
| compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in
| role, not performance._
|
| That is one structure, and it probably was predominant in
| the past because unions were historically in factories
| where workers were more interchangeable and had set tasks
| at a production line station.
|
| Another is more 'guild-like': Jane Smith who is Waitress
| #2, and Tom Cruise who plays Ethan Hunt in _Mission
| Impossible_ , are both part of the same union/guild, but
| one is able to negotiate a much higher salary. But they
| have the same 'base' level of protection with regards to
| working conditions, pension, health care, _etc_.
|
| Certainly Tom Cruise can go above and beyond those 'base'
| levels, but the union/guild simply provides a floor which
| everyone is entitled to.
|
| There's no reason why a union contract could not negotiate
| things like working conditions, health/child care,
| pensions/retirement funds, _etc_ , but leave salaries out
| of the collective agreement. Or perhaps have pay bands,
| with retention/performance bonuses that are out side of the
| scope of the agreement, and are 100% discretionary to the
| company: everyone gets a floor, but there's no ceiling.
| sambull wrote:
| Probably the people who have had a boss tell them they
| believe minimum performance for a salaried position was 70+
| hours a week.
| jtolmar wrote:
| A union is a democratically-run tool. Every tech employee I
| talk to hates the idea of compensation being based purely
| on time in role, why would they democratically vote for
| that to be the rule?
| klyrs wrote:
| There's two ways to unionize: roll your own, or UaaS.
| Rolling your own requires a lot of work, time in
| committee meetings, and has a risk that you'll overlook
| common issues or flub negotiations due to inexperience.
| But there's a lot of flexibility, and it can be done on
| the cheap. A lot of people pick the second option: a big
| union can send a rep, draft a contract, negotiate with
| your employer, etc., in exchange for the dues it pays its
| employees with.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Because not every rule is up for vote. Ex: Majority of
| Americans want weed federally legal. America is a
| democracy. Why is that not the law? It's not up for vote.
| bombolo wrote:
| Nobody has any idea how to properly evaluate that. So they
| just pick the person who works the least and talks the
| most, using random jargon to seem smart.
| wpietri wrote:
| Unions can be what the workers want them to be. The
| industrial time-in-role thing can be a reasonable match to
| industrial industrial jobs. But collective bargaining can
| include performance-based pay. E.g., the union negotiates
| the overall base raise and the size of the performance-
| based raise pool, and then managers decide on raises and
| promotions. They can also help you resolve situations of
| individual managerial unfairness, something that HR is
| supposed to do but is very rarely effective at.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| But American tech companies would be even less likely to be
| created in the first place under European labor laws
| pjmlp wrote:
| Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems, Bayer,
| Pfizer, Nokia, Ericson, Vodafone....
|
| Managed just fine.
| [deleted]
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Do you think tech companies are more likely to come out
| of Europe or the US?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Moving goal posts, but yeah, Europe lacks a SV with
| venture capitalists raining money on every crazy idea,
| with Tony Stark like feudal lords pushing their minions
| to sleep in office with promises of free drinks and
| pizza, hoping to capitalize on the startup being sold.
|
| Thankfully.
| bartart wrote:
| I am curious, is putting up with the occasional self-
| obsessed ceo not worth it?
|
| For example Tesla has a market value greater than every
| European carmaker combined, having gone from
| approximately 0 annual car deliveries to over a million
| in just a few years while revolutionizing electric
| travel. Or with space x developing reusable rockets that
| have utterly transformed the industry. These companies
| will contribute to economic dynamism and wealth creation
| for years and decades.
|
| Macron said of American space companies, "Unfortunately
| they're not European, but they took a bet". Perhaps at a
| certain level you need people with lots of money who are
| willing to risk it
| mftrhu wrote:
| No. They keep whatever _actual_ wealth they might end up
| creating - if and when they even manage that - and the
| only thing that trickles down from them is their ego.
|
| I prefer not being subject to their whims.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not for me, I have better things to do with my life.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Not moving goalposts. Read my original post.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Examples were given, we enjoy our unions, thank you very
| much.
| AS37 wrote:
| A bunch of those started 150+ years ago, when European
| unions essentially didn't exist.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ok, lets remove those from my list.
|
| Spotify, SAP, Skype, Unity, Sitecore, OutSystems,
| Vodafone, ...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Even though it was founded in Denmark, Unity is a US HQ
| company now, and Vodafone is basally a body shop now
| mostly (what's their latest successful product?).
|
| Plus, naming 6 random European tech companies doesn't
| prove anything. Every country has tech companies. How
| many exactly doesn't really matter in this comparison,
| what matters is revenues and market cap.
|
| Consider that the US tech sector is worth significantly
| more than the tech sectors of EU + UK + Switzerland +
| Norway combined. It blows the entire EEA out of the
| water. To put it simply, the US hosts most of the largest
| tech companies by market cap and revenues.
|
| If you take the top 50 tech companies in the world by
| market cap[1], the only European companies on the list
| are ASML, Booking, SAP, Schneider Electric and Dassault
| Systemes. 6 out of 50 for Europe, while the US has about
| 40 out of 50, while also claiming the highest six spots
| at the top.
|
| Ouch! That's not even a competition. It's why American
| tech workers get paid so much. Not because they don't get
| government mandated PTO and sick leave, or can get fired
| more easily, or don't pay more taxes for unemployment and
| socialized healthcare, as is the common myth, but because
| the companies they work for are so obscenely rich
| compared to European ones and a lot more numerous.
|
| /QED
|
| [1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-
| companies-b...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well they need the money to make up for being left alone
| to care for themselves.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| If the European standards are so good, where are all of the
| influential European tech companies?
|
| To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider
| asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the
| European system and if there's a link between European labor
| standards and the lack of influential European tech
| companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many
| capable and educated technology workers, yet almost always
| all of the tech companies we're ever talking about are
| American. Why is this?
| faitswulff wrote:
| A simple answer is that being able to abuse workers allows
| businesses to move faster.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Spotify, Skype, Minecraft, Battlefield, Ericsson, SAAB
|
| oh and the Linux kernel.
|
| Is your brain broken?
| BigRedDog1669 wrote:
| Good company to work for is not the same as big company
| everyone is talking about on hacker news. Those are two
| different things. Why should people optimize for computer
| nerd prestige? I might not care to work for Amazon,
| Microsoft, etc. Influential can be a bad thing if they are
| negatively influencing society.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > Why should people optimize for computer nerd prestige?
|
| The thing I'd like to focus on isn't nerd prestige, but
| good jobs, as the article was about inequality as nothing
| fixes social alienation and inequality more than lots of
| people having a good income and being part of society.
| These big tech companies, whatever major negatives they
| provide to the culture in many ways, at least employ a
| lot of people and give them a path to being part of that
| comfy middle class.
|
| If the concern is inequality, then is a pile of great
| paying jobs with worse labor standards better than a few
| ok paying jobs with great labor standards? See where I'm
| going with that?
|
| These are complex issues...I don't think I have all of
| the answers, but I just want to point out that there
| might be some tradeoffs to the good sounding things like
| unions and much better labor protections.
| pxmpxm wrote:
| Ha, if anything Twitter's the paragon of a European tech
| company. Overstaffed, politicized and unable to make money,
| all while their top talent flees to competitors in sf bay
| area.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Why are European wages so low? Why aren't their unions
| extracting more meaningful pay? Why do the non-unionized US
| workers make so much more money?
| gchamonlive wrote:
| It's because you have the blessing and privilege of working two
| to three jobs in a capitalist society, a very small price to
| pay to access all capitalism has to offer: smartphones, TVs and
| cleaning machines that break in a month after warranty expires,
| cars, a healthcare system that will take your house and your
| dog as collateral...
|
| Unions? you should be thankful!
| navane wrote:
| Not saying unions don't equalize, but 1940-1945 had something
| else going on besides being peak union.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| I think that's the point. Workers want to be paid more if they
| feel like they are more deserving.
| avereveard wrote:
| This article puts together two graphs and absolutely give no
| backing as to which one is the causation of the other beyond
| "see?" or if there's any backing model for their correlation than
| one could go and test.
|
| This is sensationalistic propaganda, not research.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| You would honestly think that in 2022 someone would critically
| ask the author if they're falling into a "correlation implies
| causation" fallacy.
| avereveard wrote:
| Considering I'm being downvoted on top of that, I might have
| overvalued this community as well.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Inequality rises due to overpopulation. It's a numbers game.
| option wrote:
| we should stop worrying about inequality and instead fixate on
| these two metrics: (1) how well off are the poorest and those
| unable to work and (2) how well off is the middle class
| hintymad wrote:
| I think unions in private companies have value. The unions at
| least know they can't demand too much or their companies will be
| out of business. On the other hand, I don't get unions in public
| institutions: the government is unlikely to go out of business,
| so what is possibly the check and balance of the unions?
| k__ wrote:
| In Germany at least, I have the feeling the Unions don't do much.
|
| I know a bunch of nurses, and they still are paid badly.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Are you German?
|
| What if without unions, it would be worse?
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is spot on. The evisceration of unions is the legacy of the
| Reagan/Thatcher years (ie the 1980s). Real wages have been
| stagnant for 40+ years [1]. Much of modern American culture can
| be summed up with this quote [2]:
|
| > "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in
| America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited
| proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
|
| The Cold War and the hugely successful propaganda against
| communism spilled over to utterly decimate the labor movement in
| the US. You will however immediately lose most Americans as soon
| as you use the word "socialism". Let me summarize the usual
| rebuttals:
|
| 1. Socialism isn't communisum. The first is more about equality
| of opportunity. The second is more equality of outcome;
|
| 2. Socialism is not a poverty cult. Society is insanely wealthy.
| It's simply about sharing the wealth such that like 8 people
| don't own 50% of the economy;
|
| 3. Debt is built into your existence. Student debt, medical debt,
| housing debt, etc. This is by design to rob you of autonomy and
| keep you as compliant workers. Often this is referred to as
| "neofeudalism" or "neoserfdom".
|
| 5. There is no value without labor;
|
| 6. "The workers owning the means of production" simply means
| labor sharing in the value they create. And no, an Amazon
| warehouse worker getting paid minimum hour and being penalized
| for taking bathroom breaks is not "sharing";
|
| 7. Too many people have unrealistic views about their ability to
| negotiate and their overall ability, which is why you'll see so
| many comments like "I don't want to be kept down by low
| performers".
|
| 8. The financialization of housing turns people into NIMBYs who
| want to see their home values go up even though cost of housing
| is the leading factor in homelessness and has historically been
| used as a tool for segregation after explicit segregation was
| outlawed;
|
| 9. Creating monopolies such that companies can charge $1000/month
| and otherwise bankrupt you for needing lifesaving healthcare is
| state violence;
|
| 10. The police as an institution that exists today is a tool for
| protecting capital and those who own it; and
|
| 11. You are not Elon Musk. You will never be Elon Musk. Elon Musk
| doesn't know who you are. Elon Musk would melt you down for
| rocket fuel if it increased profits.
|
| [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-
| us...
|
| [2]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-
| once-...
| js8 wrote:
| To everybody who thinks this is just correlation and not
| causation - read the post properly. They mention:
|
| "Labor unions both sustained prosperity, and ensured that it was
| shared; union bargaining power has been shown to moderate the
| compensation of executives at unionized firms."
|
| And give a link to a study. This result has been seen across
| countries, and is the CAUSAL link you're looking for.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Let's just read the title: "As unions decline, inequality
| rises"
|
| That is very much a statement about correlation. Otherwise it
| would say, "Unions' Decline _CAUSED_ Inequality ". But, to
| anyone with a passing knowledge of statistics, that is clearly
| an impossible claim to make. This is _one_ time series
| realization for _one_ country.
|
| Let's go further. Is there any mention of causality in the
| article. And I do mean quantified causality. The answer is
| "no". Is there even any mention of correlation? Again, the
| answer is "no".
|
| Let's keep going. Let's evaluate the aims and intent of the
| article. Let's start with EPI, the publisher of this article.
| The Chair of EPI is "Elizabeth H. Shuler ... president of the
| AFL-CIO, a federation of 58 unions and 12.5 million working
| people". Other board members include current and former union
| leadership from the United Steelworkers, the UAW, the Nonprofit
| Professional Employees Union, Service Employees International
| Union, the International Association of Machinists and
| Aerospace Workers, the American Federation of State, County and
| Municipal Employees, the Communication Workers of America, and
| the American Federation of Teachers. All huge unions.
|
| In other words, this publication is not a work of science. It
| is not a credible academic publication. It is the motivated,
| self interested rhetoric of union leadership.
| dehrmann wrote:
| My theory is unions thrive when there's a labor shortage, so
| workers will get paid more just because there's a labor
| shortage, decreasing inequality. If there's a labor glut, the
| union model falls over because it can't maintain its monopoly,
| and executives pat themselves on the back for lowering
| production costs, even though it was mostly driven by the macro
| environment.
| dstauffer11 wrote:
| Oh wow, they have a study! Definitely definitive then, case
| closed.
|
| More seriously, my wife and I got into an argument about the
| effects of unions once and this was the best summary I could
| find: https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/what-
| unions-d...
|
| (yes it is by the Heritage foundation so their top-line summary
| probably has some ideological bias but the list of study
| summaries at the bottom is great) Generally, studies found that
| unions benefitted the unionized workers at the expense of the
| most and least skilled workers. And was slightly bad for
| company investment/earnings long term. But by far my favorite
| result (and the best study design from the list, imo) was a
| regression-discontinuity analysis that found no effect of
| unionization whatsoever:
|
| "Compares companies whose workers voted narrowly for a union
| with companies whose workers voted narrowly against a union.
| Since the difference between winning and losing is close to
| random, this provides an estimate of the causal effect of
| randomly organizing a given company. Finds that workers who
| vote to join a union do win certification but that unions have
| essentially no effect on the firm or the workers. Wages do not
| rise, and employment and productivity do not fall. Unionized
| companies are no more likely to go out of business than are
| non-union firms."
|
| DiNardo, John, and David S. Lee, "Economic Impacts of New
| Unionization on Private Sector Employers: 1984-2001," The
| Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 119, No. 4 (November
| 2004), pp. 1383-1441.
| Gimpei wrote:
| I don't have any real opinion about the direction of causality.
| If anything the idea of unions contributing to more wage
| equality makes sense to me. But, linking to a single study as
| "proof" of anything is a big no no. It is very easy to cherry
| pick studies so that you get the "true" outcome. The only way
| to make a halfway convincing argument is to look at every piece
| of evidence on the question and aggregate them. This is why we
| believe global warming is man made and severe despite a few
| studies that suggest otherwise. One other caveat I would add is
| that if you read the linked study, they're only reporting
| correlations. There doesn't appear to be a causal
| identification strategy there. Which isn't to say it isn't
| interesting and worthwhile. Only that one should take the
| results with an appropriate level of caution.
| dash2 wrote:
| Mr Always-grumbles-about-correlation-studies reporting in here.
| Maybe it's a nice causal study, but the jump from "moderates
| compensation of top executives" to "reduces equality across the
| whole income spectrum" is a big stretch.
|
| Update: also, I went and scanned the linked article (because
| I'm that type). They're credible authors, but they themselves
| explicitly say: "In reporting correlations between unionization
| and managerial pay, we are not necessarily able to establish
| whether unions cause differences.... We try a variety of
| strategies to understand these issues, however each is
| imperfect."
| js8 wrote:
| "In reporting correlations between unionization and
| managerial pay, we are not necessarily able to establish
| whether unions cause differences"
|
| Yes, but that's a different correlation vs causation issue.
| The point is, the phenomenon of unions equalizing pay, on the
| company (micro) level (which has been reproduced in other
| countries and time periods), can be considered to be a causal
| explanation for the phenomenon of rising inequality when
| unions decline, in the society at large.
| factfindingisfn wrote:
| Ha! This is a best loosely coupled. EPI discloses labor unions
| fund them. Labor Unions did nothing for families in the
| 60s,70s,80s, and 90s when all manufacturer jobs were driven out
| of the US due to bad labor negotiations. Joining a union is about
| as helpful for your job as joining a country club except you
| don't get any real perks.
| wpietri wrote:
| Laying all of the US's industrial decline at the feet of unions
| is a bit much. I think a lot of the management-hostile, zero-
| sum thinking that drove bad union behavior was a clear response
| to previous management behavior filled with both exploitation
| that drove the rise of unions and hostility when they couldn't
| get away with as much.
|
| An instructive example here is the story of the NUMMI plant in
| the 1980s, which clearly shows the awfulness of GM's internal
| culture, the cluelessness of management in the face of
| existential threat, and how much things can be different, even
| with the exact same union workers:
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
|
| If we want unions that have a collaborative, win-win approach
| with management, I think we first need management that has that
| spirit toward the workers. But looking at how US companies are
| reacting to the recent uptick in unionization, I'm not very
| hopeful.
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