America and the dollar

I am neither in favor or against unions. Some of them work, others have been a monumental disaster. It all depends on the relationship between the workers and their union, and level of coorperation between the union and the company. It doesn't need to be a zero sum game. As long as there is enough balance to exploit new opportunities the mix will work well. The union can provide an extra pair of eyes and a certain amount of institution discipline, both of which are essential to a well functioning company.

n2s
 
If you don't care about material wealth, what good is an economy?
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Really? I mean, are you really asking this, for real? This isn't a rhetorical question?

You know how the US rebuilt Europe after WWII? It took money...which came from our thriving economy.

You do remember how the US overcame the Soviet Union's tyranny and potential threat? Yeah, it mostly happened because our economy was strong enough to perpetually outspend them.

Regardless of what you "care about", unless you're a Jain, you still gotta eat. In societies with monks that subsist on charity, someone has to make the money to buy the goods to feed the monks. That actually takes an economy, and just for a reference, during our decadent 1980s, the US gave an huge amount to charity per capita...due to our economy.

I'm trying to discount your argument without being mean, here, but honestly, it's kinda hard.

John
 
I belive that the original dollar sign was an "S" drawn with a "U" over it, or the other way around.
 
During the excesses of management over labor during the early part of the 20th Century, unions certainly had a place. I am not so sure anymore.

In the 1960s my father had a business printing newspapers. Dad did not like the unions, but we had to have a union typesetting shop or face getting huge problems from the Typesetter's and Pressman's Union.

It took seven years to become a Journeyman Linotype operator. The machines were very finicky and if not porperly maintained could squirt molten lead on the operator.

We hired an operator who really loved his work. He was about twice as fast as any other guy. He told me that he had been warned by "The Union" to slow down and set type only as fast as the slowest guy in our shop. But he did not heed that warning untill he found all four tires slashed on his car.

It seems that the Union felt if he was setting type twice as fast as other guys, he was stealing a job from another guy!

The Typesetters Union was unbelievably powerful. One day a light switch went out on one of our headline setting machines.

That meant headlines could not be set. Dad tried to find a union electrician who would come and repair it. In the meantime the typestting shop could not finish the pages. So the presses stopped because they had no type. Then the binding department stopped because they had no papers.

Next the shipping department closed.

The trucks and cars of the delivery poeple sat in our parking lot.

The whole business shut down because the light switch did not work. I asked Dad about bring in a lamp and he said that was against Union rules.

After a day of our entire busness being inoperable, Dad said to hell with it and bought a light switch and replaced the bad one.

The reaction from the Union was swift. They called Dad a "Scab Laborer" becasue he was not a licensed electrican. Closed our shop through picket lines and cursed Dad when he came in to work. They threatened our employees if they did not obey the Union's boycott and picket lines.

Dad had to pay fines and hire a Union electrican to come in adn replace the switch that Dad had installed. We lost thousands of dollars and nealry lost the printing job for several newspapers because they came out late.

We were so freaking happy when the "cold type" / word processors came out! These effectively broke the back of the printing typesetter's union. Anyone could learn to run one in a few weeks, not the seven years for a Linotype operator.

These are some of the resons I don't like unions....
 
tychoseven said:
If you don't care about material wealth, what good is an economy? It serves no purpose in a society that's more interested in philosophy and spirituality than getting their hands on the newest iPod.

-Tycho-
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Good point.

I read an article once somewhere where an East German said they enjoyed the freedom of Democracy but missed the time they had just to hang with their friends under the old system cause now they had to work longer.

A while back Bill Moyers was interviewing Frank Luntz. He's the GOP pollster and ad man who developed ways to sell GOP ideas. Some of the things he is famous for is the memo that said that no member of the administration should mention Iraq in a speech without at least mentioning 9/11. That they should use "climate change" instead of "global warming" because in his polling it evoked a less strong response and that the "estate tax" should be referred to as the "death tax" because it sold better. All stuff that has worked really well.

Anyway he was saying in his polling that one of the things he had noticed was that one of the major concerns of folks in the US especially women was the feeling of never having enough time. He said that that was the next big issue, and that even if a party didn't do anything about it if the candidates mentioned the fact in their speeches that it would give those people a feeling that they cared about it.
 
Bill, I have to agree with a lot of what you said. When I was a CWA union steward for a short while I aways said I had no problem with a foreman using a screwdriver as long as there was an hourly standing there with his hands in his pockets watching him.

One of the most difficult jobs is that of a telephone repair foreman:
1) The customer is aways mad.
2) The union(s) is/are on his back.
3) His workers will get away with whatever they can and will be disgruntled.
4) His supervisor wants him to work "smarter".
5) Corporate will be justifying their existance by the managment fad of the month (e.g Japanese Managment),
6) Did I mention OSHA?
7) Did I mention the PUC General Order 95?
8) Oh yeah, and when he gets home his wife is going to say "We never go anywhere."
 
Bill Marsh said:
We hired an operator who really loved his work. He was about twice as fast as any other guy. He told me that he had been warned by "The Union" to slow down and set type only as fast as the slowest guy in our shop. But he did not heed that warning untill he found all four tires slashed on his car.

....
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We have the opposite problem where I work. Out of about 50 people that do the job I do there are 4 or 5 that work all this overtime and out produce the rest. Then management sets the minimum standard based on these people and rakes everyone across the coals because they can't meet it. However anyone who knows statistics knows the bell curve of distribution. There will always be some people at the top, some at the bottom, but there is a middle ground where the majority is. However their system makes the top producers feel only adequate, while the vast majority of people in the middle are robbed of any fufillment of doing a good job.

One year a new set of managers came in and cleared up some serious bottlenecks in production. That year for the first year in like 8 years everybody in our agency met the high goal. Did we get a big thank you from management?? Nope! They added additional job duties and RAISED the standard.
 
when I started my union position in printing in NYC in the 60's I heard about the union during the war and how owners would agree to anything during negotiations just to get the few able men back to work because everyplace was so busy. when the eighty's roled around owners were using union membership as a blunt object as digital and fed-ex changed the world.

unions like the dot-etchers in NYC ruined it for themselves. if a flake of snow was in the air they demanded hotel rooms for the night or they would walk off the job and not come in the next day stopping half million dollar presses. the owners gambled 2 million dollars on a Sci-Tex system that the dot-etchers laughed themselves silly over as they corrected the jobs this digital behemoth was ruining. then they got decent Sci-Tex operators and i will never, ever forget the looks on the dot-etchers faces as they cleaned out their lockers and left work early. you had to be there
 
Here's an economic point of view:

-Unions tend to raise wages above the equilibrium level (where labor supply meets labor demand).

This creates a labor surplus, in which there are more people seeking labor than companies are willing to spend to employ.

This can be seen, partially, in today's current situation. A few weeks ago, GM announced that it would lay off 30,000 union workers. Ford is following suit. How were these workers helped by unionization?

These companies aren't doing well, and nor is the the American manufacturing sector. So, instead of being able to decrease wages a little, they are bound by union rules to maintain or even boost wages for a given period of time that the contract has specified. So, instead of a small cut to all, they lay off thousands. I don't find this equitable.

Chris
 
GM was only too happy to give workers and pensioners whatever they needed as long as they were slapping SUV style bodies over basic truck chassis and drivetrains and overcharging for em. that train has left the station now. the horse is out of the barn. it doesn't take an abacus to tell that someone has spilled the gruel. etc. Detroit has a bad habit of getting caught with huge inventories of stuff no-one want's think they woulda learned their lesson the first time.

khuck related stuff: my Pen arrived and I'm dazzled!
 
Spectre said:
Really? I mean, are you really asking this, for real? This isn't a rhetorical question?

You know how the US rebuilt Europe after WWII? It took money...which came from our thriving economy.

You do remember how the US overcame the Soviet Union's tyranny and potential threat? Yeah, it mostly happened because our economy was strong enough to perpetually outspend them.

Regardless of what you "care about", unless you're a Jain, you still gotta eat. In societies with monks that subsist on charity, someone has to make the money to buy the goods to feed the monks. That actually takes an economy, and just for a reference, during our decadent 1980s, the US gave an huge amount to charity per capita...due to our economy.

I'm trying to discount your argument without being mean, here, but honestly, it's kinda hard.

John
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The "you" in my statement was a social you, not an individual you. An economy is an imaginary tool, nothing more. Money is useful, to be sure, so long as you don't confuse it with reality. It's numbers on little pieces of paper, or ones and zeros being moved around on a computer. Begging monks can still eat even if money doesn't change hands. We (as a society) need money to motivate us because we have no common culture or ideals. Look at the Fremen in Frank Herbert's Dune books. They worked to terraform a planet despite the knowledge that their grandchildren's grandchildren wouldn't see the benefits. But one day it would come, and their common values allowed them to come together behind a goal that would take generations to unfold. There was no need for economic bribery. They did what was needed to achieve a goal. Monks can grow their own food. People can grow food and give it to monks. People can trade goods and services for food and give it to monks. Money doesn't need to be involved in a society that values something other than greed.

-Tycho-
 
Maybe we should set some definitions, to be sure we're talking about the same things.

To me, an economy is the flow of goods and services in a country. Let me give you a dictionary definition of economic: Of or relating to the practical necessities of life; material.

An economy ecompasses all distribution of wealth (to include barter and gifting) in a country. It is impossible to have a society where nothing is exchanged.

Ultimately, no-one cares about money; they only care about the things they want.

I guess I'm glad you read Dune, but could we have some relevance?

John
 
"I do not advocate a solution for our present situation because I see little point in trying to put band-aids on a dying civilization devoid of culture or values other than consumerism."

If you consider this a "dying civilization" I believe you are confused, misled, or begrudged. Please feel FREE to vacate this country as soon as you deem it necessary to save your own sorry *&^!
 
Compensation decreases as a % of an economy as productivity in the economy increases -- unless producing more "product" (goods and services) absorbs the workers displaced by increased productivity.

Increased productivity increases corporate gross profit.

40% of the population owns stock in corporations, directly or through 401K's, IRA's, or mutual funds.

One could conclude that productivity should decrease.

I conclude everyone should own corporate stock.

The allocation of financial benefits from production between producers and financiers depends on relative scarcity between labor and capital. There is lots of surplus labor in the world -- more every day. Not that capital is scarce in absolute terms. Look at interest rates. Labor is just less scarce -- and getting even less scarce all the time.

Who will buy Walmart's goods when the logical outcome of their policies is achieved? Not the workers of China with their $.70/hr. pay.
 
I conclude everyone should own corporate stock.

Under communism, the people own the means of production; it has been shown that that sort of economic democracy does not work.

n2s
 
No, it doesn't work. But owning stock is an interesting idea for the working class. I own no stock. I can't afford any- probably can't afford not to. I wonder what would happen if partial wages paid in stock options were more common place?


Capitalism works. We need to get it to work better. Maybe the Wonks are right and we should loosen most controls and see what happens.

Usually, when my posts get this watery, Bruise shows up and helps me out, but that hasn't happened lately.




munk
 
Our "great economy" is now just propped up by China's central bank and the Japanese government, who buys a tremendous amount of our debt and government securities to keep up going and buying more of their stuff. If they wanted to, they could probably devastate and probably destroy our economy. We could be another Soviet Union. I'm not taking a conservative or liberal side, I'm just making an independant observation, like any good CPA, and saying that Folks, we've been sold out.
 
Spectre said:
To me, an economy is the flow of goods and services in a country. Let me give you a dictionary definition of economic: Of or relating to the practical necessities of life; material.

An economy ecompasses all distribution of wealth (to include barter and gifting) in a country. It is impossible to have a society where nothing is exchanged.

Ultimately, no-one cares about money; they only care about the things they want.
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When I say economy, I mean one that employs money as the standard of exchange. Now I'm not arguing against the concept of money, because an external standard of exchange is useful. Currently we (socially) place heavy emphesis on money and material goods to the exclusion of actually living, and all that comes with a balance of work and lesiure. My point stands: money is illusory, it only has what value we collectively delude ourselves into believing. I observe that as a species we have forgotten what is real and confused a means of exchange with the ends of the exchange. What exactly does Bill Gates do with his 40+ billion? What does he want that those billions can't buy?

I guess I'm glad you read Dune, but could we have some relevance?

John
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Perhaps I am not making my point clearly, but the relevance is that economics is irrelevant in a society that has goals of an idealistic nature. For real-world examples see Vedic or pre-christian Scandanavian cultures. The material is only the means, and while goods may have to be exchanged, there is no confusion as to their nature. Our present society is one of means, not ends, and therefore we value the material more than the spiritual or ideal.

aproy1101 said:
If you consider this a "dying civilization" I believe you are confused, misled, or begrudged. Please feel FREE to vacate this country as soon as you deem it necessary to save your own sorry *&^!
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All civilizations begin dying as soon as they are founded. It's a pattern that's been repeated countless times throughout history. However, I'm not referring solely to the US, but to Western civilization and Globalization. I do not believe I am confused or misled, but I am begrudged. I'm surrounded by people who prefer malls to forests and getting wasted to meditating or having a thoughtful conversation. Industry creates "wealth" at the cost of unbroken wilderness, clean air, clean water, and a balanced, healthy life where we take care of our material needs and spend the rest of our limited time on earth doing something meaningful for ourselves and those we love. That is why I call ours a dying civilization. I'm hardly the first to make the observation, and perceptive individuals have been writing on the subject for hundreds of years. I'd leave the country, but it wouldn't do much good, not the way China and Europe are adopting American consumerism. I've found it's easier to simply withdraw from the degenerative aspects of society and focus on activities that serve to improve the self so that one has the strength to resist and create something that brings the world closer to a healthy ideal.

-Tycho-
 
and the only good news about being sold out is when rats do that, all the other rats are sold out too. So, the Japanese are with us to the end. Much of the world is interlinked.




munk
 
That is why I call ours a dying civilization. I'm hardly the first to make the observation, and perceptive individuals have been writing on the subject for hundreds of years.
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Wow. Just...wow. News flash: how many "hundreds of years" has the US been around? :rolleyes: They couldn't have been too perceptive, because we're still
here.

Here are some synonyms for idealistic: 11 entries found for idealistic.
Main Entry: dreamy
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: illusory
Synonyms: abstracted, astral, calming, chimerical, daydreaming, dreamlike, excellent, fanciful, fantastic, gentle, idealistic, imaginary, immaterial, impractical, intangible, introspective, introvertive, lulling, marvelous, misty, musing, mythical, nightmarish, otherworldly, pensive, phantasmagoric, phantasmagorical, preoccupied, quixotic, relaxing, romantic, shadowy, soothing, speculative, unreal, unsubstantial, utopian, vague, visionary, whimsical
 
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