[quote=sdduuuude]Thank you for acknowledging the point I have been trying to make.
Unions that serve big corporations … Well, I can’t say I like them, but I fully appreciate their efforts, as private entities, to get the highest wage they possibly can from big corporations.
But those same efforts directed towards the taxpayers really chaps my hide.
[quote=CA renter]The way I see it, we, as a society, can choose to have the profits derived from labor go to the workers (who create the profits in the first place) or to those who control access to money and power.[/quote]
That is all very happy when the “profit” is true profit going to a private corp. However, when you substitute “taxpayers money” for “profits” it loses it’s noble intent because the workers are no longer attacking the powers that be, but their friends, neighbors and the tax-paying class, which – if you believe Obama – isn’t the wealthy.
Finally, a parting thought regarding the private sector unions – Consider this. The pensions funds of all those union workers and millions of other non-union workers are invested heavily in the stocks of American corporations. So, those “profits” you are shifting to the workers come from a cross-section of society. Somehow, we focus on profit-taking by major stockholders and the high-ranking officers, but American corporations are really owned by every-day people because pension funds are major investors. It isn’t like stockholders are an elite society. Anyone can own stock in any publicly held corporation.[/quote]
Yes, pension funds own stocks, bonds, etc.; but I’d be willing to bet that, for most “average” Americans, they’d be far more harmed more by losing a job than by losing their 401K. Unfortunately, because of the relatively low wage inflation of the past ~30 years, most “average” Americans have very little in their 401Ks. They are far more dependent on wages than on investment income. Sure, everyone would like to be a “capitalist” and sit back while their money does the work for them…but we can’t all be capitalists. Somebody has to do the work that enables the capitalists to make money.
“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 38.3% of all privately held stock, 60.6% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”
Again, your argument assumes that costs would go down if govt employees weren’t unionized. I doubt that would happen…at least, not for very long. Someone else would come in to stake their claim to that money.
Contrary to what many people might think, union employess DO have competition. There are many, many services that were once performed by unionized public employees that are now being performed by non-union public employees or private companies. It’s not always worked out to the taxpayers’ benefit, either.
It’s easy to want to separate public and private enterprise and assume there is no connection, but that’s not how it works. The public and private sectors are completely intertwined. Each is burdened with the other, and each receives benefits from the other. Employment in both sectors affects us all, irrespective of whether or not we are public or private (or union, or non-union) employees.
