One more thing that has to be addressed about the “free market” in labor. I’m sure you’ll agree that a truly free market requires full transparency and a relative balance of power between buyer and seller. If one side unilaterally controls the market, then it is no longer “free.”
If we are to have a truly “free” labor market, then all job postings should have all of the compensation information advertized along with the job description. And all positions in every publicly held company should have the compensation for every position posted publicly (without names, though many will be obvious). If people really knew what everyone else was being paid — including ALL types of compensation — then at least we could argue that the market would be a bit more free. As it stands, the employer holds all the knowledge and all the power. I do not believe that such an unequal balance of power is suggestive of a free market.
Corporations work together to control compensation, so why shouldn’t labor be able to respond in kind? Note the article I’ve linked, below…this is just one of many examples.
This is from another thread, but it applies here. The points are numbered because I was responding to livin’s post in the other thread:
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[quoting myself]
Under no circumstances do we live in a democracy. Those with power (read: money) control our government and our laws, and they are becoming more brazen about it as unions and workers flounder. An individual capitalist — one who makes a living from capital as opposed to working for a living — will ALWAYS have more power than an individual worker. This is why unions were necessary to level the playing field between capital and labor.
It is only when working people join together with common goals and interests that they can put in place the checks and balances necessary to grow an economy that benefits a majority of the working population. Individual working people, all focusing on their own, individual self-interest will NEVER be able to affect the economy in a way that would benefit workers at the expense of capital (and it is almost always zero-sum).
As far as having an “educated electorate,” it should be obvious by now that most people hardly vote, much less understand the issues. And that’s exactly how “capital” intends to keep it. They control the MSM and the popular messages that become mainstream thinking. Haven’t you noticed that truly important issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership are hardly ever (if ever!) mentioned in the MSM, while Miley Cyrus’ “twerking” at the VMAs is blasted to millions on a regular loop.
2. “Growth,” does not necessarily correlate with a strong or healthy economy. It depends on how one defines growth: rising prices? increasing production and exports? growing debt burdens? How are the benefits of this growth allocated among the population of workers and/or investors? Are we using more resources than what is sustainable over time? All of these things help determine whether or not “growth” is good or bad…and it can indeed be very, very bad, IMHO.
And as far as those “socialistic policies” in Europe…the problems in Europe are primarily with the Mediterranean countries, and the causes of their problems are varied, but I don’t know of any of them that have been caused by socialism unless they have “socialism without taxation” (as tax evasion is a national pastime in some of those countries), OR “socialism with open borders.” Neither of those situations will ever work, for obvious reasons, but the problem does not lie with a pro-worker agenda nor with decent social safety nets; there is much more to the story than “socialism.” Some of the most socialistic European countries are also the most successful:
Personally, I define a successful economy as one in which the greatest possible number of people have their basic needs met, and one in which those who produce the most and work the hardest are rewarded the most. A successful economy enables the majority of the population to save for a rainy day/retirement and feel secure in their financial well-being, but doesn’t allow a handful of people to hoard an outsized portion of the country’s finite and/or natural resources to the detriment of the masses. A successful economy provides ample room for individual advancement as a result of hard work, but ensures that those who reap all the rewards accept an equal, or greater, amount of risk (with limited liability/corporate protection, bankruptcy laws, etc., that is not the case in our country).
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3. You believe that, absent regulations and restrictions, there will always remain a balance of power and lack of corruption at the highest levels…ensuring that nobody takes advantage of their powerful position by manipulating markets and regulations in a way that benefits them at the expense of the many. I think this is quite naive. It has never happened in history. Capital and resources will ALWAYS flow to those who already own or control the greatest amount of wealth and resources. It is the very nature of capitalism. This is why I favor regulations and tax laws that seek to balance the power of the few with the interests and needs of the many.
Here’s an example of how just a few corporate “leaders” can use their weight to create an economic system where power is unilaterally in the hands of capital:
This is the article I was referring to.
“Having solved the problem of people not wasting enough time on the internet, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now tackling his first real-world political cause: immigration reform. With a slick new non-profit group funded by tech millionaires, Zuckerberg is rallying Silicon Valley’s elite into a political force they hope might one day rival Wall Street. Zuckerberg’s political moves are of a piece with his career as a tech mogul: hugely ambitious, painfully awkward, entirely self-interested, and surprisingly successful. And he’s just getting started.
Earlier this month, Zuckerberg unveiled the vehicle of his political will: FWD.us, a bipartisan, non-profit political advocacy group that sounds like an iPhone app. FWD.us has attracted big names from both politics and technology, including former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart, Romney adviser Dan Senor, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt. The group hopes to raise $50 million to fund its lobbying for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform, which is currently making its way through Congress.
Why immigration? We need those smart foreign brains: In a Washington Post op-ed announcing FWD.us, Zuckerberg wrote that “in a knowledge economy, the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country.” To that end, FWD.us says on its website it aims to “establish a streamlined process for admitting future workers” and increase the number of H-1B visas that let companies hire high-skilled foreign workers to “continue to promote innovation and meet our workforce needs.”
The implicit argument behind FWD.us is that the U.S. doesn’t have enough high-skilled domestic workers to meet tech companies’ needs. This is a myth, and Zuckerberg and FWD.us are just the latest tech players to promote it. In fact there is no shortage of domestic IT workers, as shown in a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. While there is an unusually low unemployment rate among American tech workers (3%), they haven’t enjoyed the large salary increases that would signal a shortage. There is also little evidence that the foreign workers tech companies hire are any better than Americans. The real reason tech companies want to hire more high-skilled immigrants is that they can pay them less than Americans, since immigrants are in a more economically precarious position. More than 80 percent of workers hired under the H-1B program are paid less than their American counterparts, according to the EPI. This kind of outsourcing benefits tech companies while hurting domestic tech workers.”
