The Almighty Unions

[Thinking Aloud]

Cartoon and photograph derail moved to here. Any posts here that belong there or vice versa, please PM/report. Thanks!

[Seth]

The Poor Billionaires, Chip in to Help Them Out They Really Are Suffering

What all these typically leftist propaganda screeds always fail to mention is that the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those "poor billionaires" the Marxists love to rant and rave about, already pay 40 percent of the taxes collected by the government, while the bottom 50 percent of society, the lumpen proletarian dependent class, pays no taxes at all.

They also like to ignore the fact that if the tax on "poor billionaires" was 100 percent of their assets, it wouldn't make a dent in the national debt, but it would destroy the economic base of this country and would quickly destroy the economy by destroying all the companies that these "poor billionaires" operate and fund, which provide jobs for all the lumpen proletarian dependent class in the lower half of the economic scale.

[egbert]

Also, most unions recognise that excessively greedy wage demands will halt the growth of the companies that employ them.

Of course, that's hardly applicable when the union members work for the government rather than for a company.

Howso?

[.Morticia.]

Unions have to negotiate with governments with rely on the irrational public who generally want good public services and lower taxes, negotiating with the private sector bosses is relatively a lot easier when both sides at least want the same thing more money

The problem with unions in the public sector is that they are generally striking against public interest, and their interests are diametrically opposed to the taxpayer's interest. Moreover, there isn't a board of directors that management has to be accountable to, so management in government doesn't have the incentive to drive as hard a bargain as management in the private sector.

But they WORK for the public interest.

They are working in schools and hospitals and in the enviroinment and they bring us clean water . etc etc

Without them and without public spending society and the economy would come to a stop.

So tell me again how they are against the public interest.

[Seth]

Unions have to negotiate with governments with rely on the irrational public who generally want good public services and lower taxes, negotiating with the private sector bosses is relatively a lot easier when both sides at least want the same thing more money

The problem with unions in the public sector is that they are generally striking against public interest, and their interests are diametrically opposed to the taxpayer's interest. Moreover, there isn't a board of directors that management has to be accountable to, so management in government doesn't have the incentive to drive as hard a bargain as management in the private sector.

But they WORK for the public interest.

Don't be an ass, they work for THEIR interest, as is true of every worker.

They are working in schools and hospitals and in the enviroinment and they bring us clean water . etc etc

So? They are employees of the people hired to do a specific job for a specified wage. That doesn't make them saints, they are just workers. They negotiate for their wage and compensation in THEIR interest, which is to get as much for doing their job as they can persuade the bureaucrat who negotiates with them to pay. They have no particular interest in working for the government for less than they can possibly get.

Without them and without public spending society and the economy would come to a stop.

Well, for the most part, ending much of public spending would be a positive benefit to society and our economy, given the fact that right now there are more federal government workers than there are workers in US industry. But nobody's saying that they shouldn't get paid, just that they shouldn't be permitted to unionize, and their wages should be subject to the need, ability and willingness of the PUBLIC to pay, and that can change at any time.

So tell me again how they are against the public interest.

They are just workers. Their motivation in re their salary and benefits is to get as much as possible for their labor, just as is the case with any worker. The motive of a private employer is to pay as little as possible in order to improve his profit margin. In that equation, the interests of the worker and the interests of the employer are set against each other, and what results is a balancing of the various needs and interests that provide acceptable compensation to the employee and acceptable expense to the employer.

When public employees negotiate collectively, they are NOT negotiating with their employer, who are the People, the taxpayers. They are negotiating with ANOTHER PUBLIC EMPLOYEE who has no motive to reduce the compensation package of the other public employees, since it's no skin off of his nose, and it's in his interest to increase his utility and importance by having more employees to manage who support the bureaucrat's own sucking at the public teat. There is no tension between the employee and employer, and that's why public union members get much higher wages and better compensations packages than do employees in the private sector doing the same sort of job.

[.Morticia.]

You just keep pushing the lie that people are selfish

They aren't.

[Azathoth]

I am

[Seth]

You just keep pushing the lie that people are selfish

They aren't.

Sure they are, at least when it comes to getting paid for their labor. And why shouldn't they be? It's in the vested interests to try to get as much as they can. Nothing at all wrong with that. The problem arises when the person who decides for the government has no real motivation to save taxpayer dollars. They aren't HIS dollars, they come from the deep pockets of the taxpayers, who mostly don't even know about the negotiations. This inevitably leads to the bureaucrat giving the union public employees more than they deserve for the work they actually do.

Now if we were to tie the wages and benefits of the bureaucrats and negotiators who negotiate public sector union contracts in inverse proportion to the amount of increase or decrease in the benefits offered the union workers, the balance would be restored because those negotiating for the people would have a direct interest in cutting the wages of the union employees. They cut the union employee's pay 10 percent, they get a 10 percent wage hike. They give the unions a 10 percent wage hike, their pay is cut 10 percent.

[sandinista]

You just keep pushing the lie that people are selfish

They aren't.

People are only "selfish" because "selfishness" is rewarded under capitalist societies.

[Seth]

You just keep pushing the lie that people are selfish

They aren't.

People are only "selfish" because "selfishness" is rewarded under capitalist societies.

"Selfishness" is rewarded by evolution, my friend. It exists in every society, and in every organism on the planet. And yes, selfishness is rewarded by capitalism, which is what makes the economy work.

The fundamental flaw in Marxism is its failure to understand basic human nature, primarily selfishness, which is also known as "self-interest," and it falsely presumes that people are actually willing to give according to their ability but only take according to their need. Altruism, the willingness to sacrifice one's own interests to the interests of others only occurs when our own basic Maslowvian needs have been met first.

Marxism fallaciously presumes that people will be satisfied with the intellectual and philosophical propaganda of the left as a substitute for things like food, shelter and sex. Not going to happen.

Capitalism works because it rewards those who work hard in their own self-interest with economic advancement and success. When they succeed economically, they can meet their Maslovian needs more easily and then they have assets to spare, and that's when altruism and charity begin to function to the benefit of those who are less economically successful.

In Marxism, everyone is equal...equally destitute and oppressed, and nobody can get ahead, so altruism and charity evaporates, and selfishness burgeons as the proletarian scrabbles for scraps to meet their basic needs, as seen in the Soviet Union. They also seek to do as little work as humanly possible, because there's no point in working hard because there is no motive to do so.

[JimC]

Right wing loonies can bleat all they like that government employees can't unionize...

But workers don't really give a shit what right wing loonies say. They know that to protect their rights as workers, they need to act and bargain collectively, or else they will be screwed by their bosses. Doesn't matter whether a boss is a government man or not, he will still want to get blood from a stone, unless workers band together.

Public sector unions around the world are here to stay, so idealogues from the right are fantasising if they think otherwise...

[Seth]

Right wing loonies can bleat all they like that government employees can't unionize...

But workers don't really give a shit what right wing loonies say. They know that to protect their rights as workers, they need to act and bargain collectively, or else they will be screwed by their bosses. Doesn't matter whether a boss is a government man or not, he will still want to get blood from a stone, unless workers band together.

Public sector unions around the world are here to stay, so idealogues from the right are fantasising if they think otherwise...

Tell it to the government workers in Wisconsin.

[JimC]

Right wing loonies can bleat all they like that government employees can't unionize...

But workers don't really give a shit what right wing loonies say. They know that to protect their rights as workers, they need to act and bargain collectively, or else they will be screwed by their bosses. Doesn't matter whether a boss is a government man or not, he will still want to get blood from a stone, unless workers band together.

Public sector unions around the world are here to stay, so idealogues from the right are fantasising if they think otherwise...

Tell it to the government workers in Wisconsin.

One state in one country, and probably a temporary thing at that.

99% of the developed world says otherwise...

You seem to assume that the evil unions will immediately gouge a ridiculous and inflated wage from a cowering government. Doesn't work like that in the real world. Lots of posturing, argument and hoo-haa, followed by a compromise, less than the workers would like, more than the government would like...

At least in Australia, there are legal arbitration measures that involve giving weight to the economic realities of what can be afforded.

[Warren Dew]

Doesn't matter whether a boss is a government man or not, he will still want to get blood from a stone, unless workers band together.

Wow, serious naivete about how democratic government works, there. Many government jobs are basically payoffs for doing political work to help the politicians that win. Heck, Capuano, the U.S. representative in my district, has openly talked about how he feels handing out patronage jobs is a necessary part of getting elected.

[JimC]

Doesn't matter whether a boss is a government man or not, he will still want to get blood from a stone, unless workers band together.

Wow, serious naivete about how democratic government works, there. Many government jobs are basically payoffs for doing political work to help the politicians that win. Heck, Capuano, the U.S. representative in my district, has openly talked about how he feels handing out patronage jobs is a necessary part of getting elected.

Serious lack of knowledge about anything outside the US here...

Your system of electing everybody down to chief dogcatcher seems to make this sort of thing more likely. Give me a professional civil service anyday...

Maybe your system works like that in terms of corrupt payoffs, but don't naively suggest that the US is a microcosm of the rest of the world...