Hey Metro. Nice! A quote from Mrs. Metro. This could get interesting.

Re: unions and capital… once you accept the fact that there is NOTHING that can be done to stop the flow of capital to those places likely to produce the best returns, the rest is academic. You realize that false attempts to manipulate labor and production for the emotional need to “increase wages” are nothing but motivators for capital to go elsewhere. And before you get wrapped up in my comment about “emotional need”, I’ll explain. One man’s “good wages” is another man’s riches is another man’s poverty. In other words, it’s subjective and is therefore an emotional discussion without a real answer. The fact of the matter is that all we can do is try to create an environment that is most friendly to capital, and by extension, most friendly to employees. Employees are paidd according to what the market will bear for their skill set and contributions. The only true way to increase REAL wages is to increase productivity and employer competition for workers. It’s that simple.

You’ve got the laws of supply and demand backwards my friend. When demand drops, prices do not go up, they go down. Increased demand creates upward pressure on prices. It works this way universally just like the laws of gravity. You may not like gravity, but you cannot change it.

One other point. While I understand your career has been in the union mostly, I do think that you over romanticize unions from days gone by. The old days of sweatshops and child labor are long gone. Yes, unions had a hand in ending those days, but there’s NO chance of those days coming back. The most effective means of raising working standards is to have employers competing for labor. Why would you go work for a company that treats you poorly when you can work for the company on the other side of town that treats you better? How long do you think a company that underpays and overworks its employees will last in the market anyway? Not long. I can assure you. And since I am in the consulting for the hiring business, I know exactly what I speak of. Companies put a tremendous amount of resources and time into attracting and keeping the best employees they can. Salaries go up and down relative to the competition for attracting those employees. This is the way it works, Metro. It’s counter to the tradition view of the left because you place a lot of emphasis on your propensity to allow jealousy of what the other guy gets to control your thoughts. This is why you frequently refer to “greedy CEOs” in your comparisons. That’s an emotional argument that doesn’t really reflect how the world works. While there certainly may be some “greedy CEO’s” the fact of the matter is that an individual’s greed or charity is of no consequence. All that is of consequence in the issue of labor is the competitive marketplace for that labor. The rest is a distraction.

I always find this kind of discussion interesting because it brings up the inevitable core argument between those on the left and those on the right. Those on the left tend to view the economic pie as being fixed. That for one person to have a gain, someone else must have a loss. This is a zero-sum mentality. And it is false. There could not possibly be such a thing as economic growth in such a fixed-pie world. Obozo thinks like this. It’s why he complained about the negative effect of ATM’s on banking teller jobs. He doesn’t comprehend that the ATM has created tens of thousands of new jobs beyond what any number of tellers have lost theirs. And most of those jobs pay a hell of a lot more than a teller would earn. Those of us on the right know this well and we understand that the best way known to mankind to increase the standard of living for the most people is through freedom, private property, and the profit motive. Look around you. Look what capitalism has brought us in our 240 year history. We have real world examples to look at when evaluating command and control economies compared to free market economies. North Korea compared to South Korea. East Germany (when it was there) compared to West Germany. There is no question what the best system is. This is not to say that we don’t need some regulatory oversigth, but we need a hell of a lot less than we have now. We are driving capital away from America. This is what we all sense, but few recognize the real issues behind the trend. Most have misguided and emotional attachments to unrealistic beliefs behind the way they wish the world worked, not how it really is.

Great discussion with you, as always, Metro.

Have a wonderful day!

“Why can’t you put the damned dishes in the diswasher instead of leaving them in the sink?” – Mrs. ObozoMustGo to me

Metro, you’re old school. You took pride in your job. I think it’s as much mid-western , strong work ethic culture that has driven you in your work. One reason you’re great guy.

Not sure if you’ve ever been familiar with the unions in the North Eastern cities. These guys make work rules into an impossible sisyphean task for employers and non-union guys to follow. Electrical guys won’t work if they would have to remove ceiling tiles because that’s the tile guy’s job. And they are brutal and destructive with vandalizing of work and property of non-union workers or property owners. For example, I used to sell phone systems in the 90′s in the Philadelphia market before I moved away from there. If our installers had to correct a cabling mistake, the IBEW guys that rule the city would come in at night and go cut ALL the cabling that was there. This would force the customer to purchase all new cabling ONLY from the union shops and pay nearly double the going market rate from qualified non-union electricians. This was not a single event to just me. It happened constantly to all phone system vendors. The construction unions are even worse. This does not even include the cadre of 6’6″ paid thugs that go and picket and threaten other businesses and unrelated union issues at unrelated places. And they get away with it because the political machine in the city is fully entrenched with the union. And the cops are union. So there are many blind eyes that are turned from criminal activities constantly. So long as the political donations keep coming and the Democrat grass roots organizing keeps rolling, the politicians keep expanding the laws to expand the union footprint and power even further. And the cycle keeps repeating itself. The net result of course is a shrinking business community in the city. This is the view of unions in much of America, Metro. Especially the big cities. Your experience is considered an anomaly to most of us in sane world. But good for you. Our world needs more guys like you working today.

I think, all told, you and I don’t really disagree that much, Metro. We have differing perspectives in general, but I think on the whole we are in alignment. We’re just in different lanes of the same road going in the same direction. Many on here are in the opposite lanes going in the opposite direction. Those are the ones I derisively call “leftist freaks”. You certainly are NOT in that category, my friend. BTW… our discussions are the main reason I come on here, as well. Thank you.

Have a great day, Metro!

“When the United States was formed in 1776, it took 19 people on the farm to produce enough food for 20 people. So most of the people had to spend their time and efforts on growing food. Today, it’s down to 1% or 2% to produce that food. Now just consider the vast amount of supposed unemployment that was produced by that. But there wasn’t really any unemployment produced. What happened was that people who had formerly been tied up working in agriculture were freed by technological developments and improvements to do something else. That enabled us to have a better standard of living and a more extensive range of products.” – Milton Friedman

If you have to use so many words to make a point, you really don’t have a leg to stand on do you?

If you have trouble reading, Doc, just read the short posts. My conversation wasn’t with you anyway.