PAUL KRUGMAN: “At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I’m not sure whether they’re enough to cure existential despair.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/despair-american-style.html?_r=0
Unionized and (therefore shall we say) politicized: you are in control of your narrative — win or lose. Can it get any more hopeful than that? And you will probably win.
Winning being defined as labor eeking out equally emotionally satisfying/dissatisfying market results — equal that is with the satisfaction of ownership and the consumer. That’s what happens when all three interface in the market — labor interfacing indirectly through collective bargaining.
(Labor’s monopoly neutralizes ownership’s monopsony — the consumers’ willingness to pay providing the checks and balances on labor’s monopoly.)
If you feel you’ve done well relative to the standards of your own economic era you will feel you’ve done well subjectively.
For instance, my generation of (American born) cab drivers earned about $750 for a 60 hour (grueling) work week up to the early 80s. With multiples strip-offs I won’t detail here (will on request — diff for diff cities) that has been reduced to about $500 a week (at best I suspect!) I believe and that is just not enough to get guys like me out there for that grueling work.
Let’s take the minimum wage comparison from peak-to-peak instead of from peak-to-trough: $11 and hour in 1968 — at half today’s per capita income (economic output) — to $7.25 today. How many American born workers are going to show up for $7.25 in the day of SUVs and “up-to-date kitchens” all around us. $8.75 was perfectly enticing for Americans working in 1956 ($8.75 thanks to the “Master of the Senate”). The recent raise to $10 is not good enough for Chicago’s 100,000 gang members (out of my estimate 200,000 gang age minority males). Can hustle that much on the street w/o the subjective feeling of wage slavery.
Ditto middle class hiring results for two-tier supermarket contracts after Walmart undercut the unions.
Centralized bargaining is the gold standard: only thing that fends off Walmart type contract muscling. Done that way since 1966 with the Teamsters Union’s National Master Freight Agreement; the long practiced law or custom from continental Europe to French Canada to Argentina to Indonesia.
It occurred to me this morning that if the quintessential example of centralized bargaining Germany has 25% or our population and produces 200% more vehicles than we do, then, Germans produce 8X as many vehicles per capita!
And thoroughly union organized Germans feel very much in control of the narrative of their lives.
Addendum
Very rough figures: half a million Chicago employees may make less than $800 a week — almost everybody should earn $800 …
… putative minimum wage? — might allow some slippage in high labor businesses like fast food restaurants; 33% labor costs! — sort of like the Teamsters will allow exceptions when needed from the Nation Master Freight Agreement if you open up your books, they need your working business too, consumer ultimately sets limits.
Average raise of $200 a week — $10,000 a year equals $5 billion shift in income — out of a $170 billion Chicago GDP (1% of national GDP) — not too shabby to bring an end to gang wars and Despair American Style.
Merely make union busting a felony like every other form of unfair market muscling (even taking a movie in the movies). The body of laws are there — the issues presumably settled — the enforcement just needs “dentures.”
From that article: “That followed a September incident in which the student government’s president, who is black, said people in a passing pickup truck shouted epithets at him. Early last month, members of a black student organization said slurs were hurled at them by an apparently drunken white student. Also, a swastika drawn in feces was found recently in a dormitory bathroom.”
When did a slur from an ignorant ass become a cause for mass demonstrations, and a cause for verbal attacks on the university president?
Was the university expected to intervene in any and all petty disputes? Did the offended parties report these misdemeanors to the campus police?
Was this university president expected to police the streets of the campus, stamping out any disagreeable speech?
And who was to define said disagreeable speech? Do these college students understand that a government official can not infringe on free speech in the vast majority of cases? Something about the 1st amendment to the US Constitution.
Young people have become too fragile, their little psyches too easily bruised. Educators have led them to believe that they have a right to a world where they will not be psychologically bruised. And now their proteges occasionally turn on them.
I have received my share of insults throughout my lifetime. I did not like it but it never occurred to me that government should intervene on my behalf.
The First Amendment also protects the students’ rights to voice their opinions (even make verbal attacks on a university president). I think it’s good that they did so.
PAUL KRUGMAN: “At this point you probably expect me to offer a solution. But while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I’m not sure whether they’re enough to cure existential despair.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/despair-american-style.html?_r=0
Unionized and (therefore shall we say) politicized: you are in control of your narrative — win or lose. Can it get any more hopeful than that? And you will probably win.
Winning being defined as labor eeking out equally emotionally satisfying/dissatisfying market results — equal that is with the satisfaction of ownership and the consumer. That’s what happens when all three interface in the market — labor interfacing indirectly through collective bargaining.
(Labor’s monopoly neutralizes ownership’s monopsony — the consumers’ willingness to pay providing the checks and balances on labor’s monopoly.)
If you feel you’ve done well relative to the standards of your own economic era you will feel you’ve done well subjectively.
For instance, my generation of (American born) cab drivers earned about $750 for a 60 hour (grueling) work week up to the early 80s. With multiples strip-offs I won’t detail here (will on request — diff for diff cities) that has been reduced to about $500 a week (at best I suspect!) I believe and that is just not enough to get guys like me out there for that grueling work.
Let’s take the minimum wage comparison from peak-to-peak instead of from peak-to-trough: $11 and hour in 1968 — at half today’s per capita income (economic output) — to $7.25 today. How many American born workers are going to show up for $7.25 in the day of SUVs and “up-to-date kitchens” all around us. $8.75 was perfectly enticing for Americans working in 1956 ($8.75 thanks to the “Master of the Senate”). The recent raise to $10 is not good enough for Chicago’s 100,000 gang members (out of my estimate 200,000 gang age minority males). Can hustle that much on the street w/o the subjective feeling of wage slavery.
Ditto middle class hiring results for two-tier supermarket contracts after Walmart undercut the unions.
Centralized bargaining is the gold standard: only thing that fends off Walmart type contract muscling. Done that way since 1966 with the Teamsters Union’s National Master Freight Agreement; the long practiced law or custom from continental Europe to French Canada to Argentina to Indonesia.
It occurred to me this morning that if the quintessential example of centralized bargaining Germany has 25% or our population and produces 200% more vehicles than we do, then, Germans produce 8X as many vehicles per capita!
And thoroughly union organized Germans feel very much in control of the narrative of their lives.
Addendum
Very rough figures: half a million Chicago employees may make less than $800 a week — almost everybody should earn $800 …
… putative minimum wage? — might allow some slippage in high labor businesses like fast food restaurants; 33% labor costs! — sort of like the Teamsters will allow exceptions when needed from the Nation Master Freight Agreement if you open up your books, they need your working business too, consumer ultimately sets limits.
Average raise of $200 a week — $10,000 a year equals $5 billion shift in income — out of a $170 billion Chicago GDP (1% of national GDP) — not too shabby to bring an end to gang wars and Despair American Style.
Merely make union busting a felony like every other form of unfair market muscling (even taking a movie in the movies). The body of laws are there — the issues presumably settled — the enforcement just needs “dentures.”
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can not hurt me.’ This lesson was repeatedly taught in my elementary school.
‘The inmates are running the asylum.’ I first heard this little gem when it was applied to college students in 1968.
These come together when I read the news about the University of Missouri.
See: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNIVERSITY_OF_MISSOURI_TURMOIL?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-11-09-11-24-09
From that article: “That followed a September incident in which the student government’s president, who is black, said people in a passing pickup truck shouted epithets at him. Early last month, members of a black student organization said slurs were hurled at them by an apparently drunken white student. Also, a swastika drawn in feces was found recently in a dormitory bathroom.”
When did a slur from an ignorant ass become a cause for mass demonstrations, and a cause for verbal attacks on the university president?
Was the university expected to intervene in any and all petty disputes? Did the offended parties report these misdemeanors to the campus police?
Was this university president expected to police the streets of the campus, stamping out any disagreeable speech?
And who was to define said disagreeable speech? Do these college students understand that a government official can not infringe on free speech in the vast majority of cases? Something about the 1st amendment to the US Constitution.
Young people have become too fragile, their little psyches too easily bruised. Educators have led them to believe that they have a right to a world where they will not be psychologically bruised. And now their proteges occasionally turn on them.
I have received my share of insults throughout my lifetime. I did not like it but it never occurred to me that government should intervene on my behalf.
The First Amendment also protects the students’ rights to voice their opinions (even make verbal attacks on a university president). I think it’s good that they did so.
S = I + RH
http://www.businessinsider.com/sp-500-cash-usage-2015-11
( RH = Richie Hoards )
I’ve never tried this place but I’m likely(er) to now:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/joes-crab-shack-tests-tipping-policy-18-locations/story?id=35134532
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/11/pf/joes-crab-shack-no-tipping/