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Companies like Ben and Jerry's ice cream once modeled a ratio of salaries top to bottom as 7:1. Today most businesses have a 430:1 wage ratio from top to bottom.
Ben and Jerry's is one of a handful of businesses which can afford to do this because their clientele consists primarily of upscale, generally-single (and very pseudo-liberal) people who can afford to soothe their conscience by spending a little extra for an indulgence that fits their fantasies of how things ought to be, rather than how they really are.
Unions today are confined to a handful of very heavy industries (oil and chemicals, electric utilities, railroads) where the amount of capital invested per worker is very large, AND where the potential for very expensive accidents allows the employer to demand, and get, the most safety-conscious labor force available, in return for higher pay.
The rest of us have to live in the real world (seeking the lowest price; can you spell W-A-L-M-A-R-T, boys and girls) Any attempt to legislate those "wage ratios" in Lefty fantasies into the law of the land will merely drive more jobs overseas. It's time to grow up!
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 07-31-2012 at 04:49 PM..
Pension funds are 100% unsustainable. They completely fail the queuing theory. They continually require an ever-growing workforce to fund those who are no longer contributing. They, by definition, MUST collapse upon themselves so long as people either A) have longer life expectancies or B) are allowed to retire younger. There is absolutely no reason why an entity such as the USPS should have a mechanism in place by which it guarantees salary to an individual for 30+ years after they leave a job they weren't even at for 30 years - on the taxpayer dime. Unions with pension plans need to be forcibly converted to sustainable retirement plans by which what a person gets out of it is reasonably in direct correlation to what they put in.
Yes, and the alternative is Americans going broke and not being able to save enough for retirement. If they can't pay, the state will ultimately pay. Either way, America seems to be going broke all the same. That's what happens when you're no longer the most competitive game in town, and cherish mediocrity. Unions didn't destroy the k-12 system or blow up the deficit.
It seems most Americans are too stupid to plan for their retirement and are "planning" on relying on government entitlements, anyways. I've seen SO MANY posts the last few years from ppl going "I"m 62 and got laid off through no fault of my own and now I have no money and can't find a job and blah blah blah". And it's like "did you save NOTHING over the previous 44 years? When you're that close to the finish line, you shoulda been pretty much set already".
But yes, I agree with you that this country also cherishes mediocrity, as you put it. First generations where being unsuccessful is not only considered a good trait, but being successful is considered a bad thing and gets you labeled an evil banker *********. People openly claim that they don't like the "best and brightest", they want the slackers.
Ban Unions, sure thing. We might as well just give it all to the the CEO's and exec's.
Just maybe you are overlooking something about unions. While unions were fighting for better wages and benefits for it's members the non-union and management employees were raking in the goodies too. If a company gave a decent salary and benefits to a hourly worker they had to do better for their non-union employees. The same was true of people working without unions. To compete for good employes non-union companies had to offer comparable union wages and benefits to attract workers.
Since the 1970 unions have been on the decline. Companies like Ben and Jerry's ice cream once modeled a ratio of salaries top to bottom as 7:1. Today most businesses have a 430:1 wage ratio from top to bottom. The wealth of the US has transferred to the top 1%. More importantly the US is going down with a real estate market that will never recover and growing unemployment. Many American citizens are now living as though they were in a third world country without a job, money, food, or housing. Those Americans who are working are in debt up to their eyeballs with college loans, mortgages, car payments, and let us not forget medical debt.
When you finally have no more unions how do you think the non-union and management people will do? Do you think corporations will be satisfied? Once union workers and unions are gone. You are next.
I love all you clowns (and yes, that's precisely what you are - CLOWNS) who think the unions are the only things keeping CEO's from driving everybody into poverty.
News flash: MOST of us aren't in unions. MOST of us work with companies that have never been unionized, and MOST of these companies pay exactly what the market demands be paid or more. The ones that don't have a hard time keeping headcount. Unions didn't cause that.
The moment you grow up and develop enough of an IQ to realize that CEO != evil, you might actually accomplish something in this world.
BTW, 430:1 top to bottom (at least you aren't spewing that ridiculous "the average CEO makes 495 times the average worker" nonsense)? I guarantee you for every 1 person I can find that can properly run a multi-billion dollar corporation, I can find way more than 430 people to mop the floors.
While it's certainly true that the Post Office has been dealing with a decrease in mail volume for quite some time now, they would probably be doing OK, or at least much better, if it weren't for the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. That law requires the Post Office to prepay the health benefits fund for USPS retirees for the next 75 years, to the tune of approximately $5.5 billion every year.
We have state, county and local governments in dire finacial trouble in large part because of ballooning pension obligations. The same thing is happening in the private sector. This is just being fiscally responsible instead of kicking the can down the road especially in the PO's case where revenues are expected to continue to decline. There is something like half a million people that work for the PO and those revenues decline there will be less and less money to fund these pensions in the future.
The rest of us have to live in the real world (seeking the lowest price; can you spell W-A-L-M-A-R-T, boys and girls)
That wasn't a problem before Ronald Reagan began the process of killing off the unions. Even non-union workers benefited because there was a union right down the street you could threaten the boss with to gain concessions from him.
Without that threat, wages and benefits have nose-dived to the bottom and you're stuck competing with workers in Bangladesh with no leverage.
Are you content with what you have? Want more of that? Then vote Republican because that's exactly what they are delivering in states where they have the majority. Having successfully killed off private industry unions (for the most part), they're now targeting government employee unions and simpletons who don't understand what's being done them are lining up in support.
Are you content with what you have? Want more of that? Then vote Republican because that's exactly what they are delivering in states where they have the majority. Having successfully killed off private industry unions (for the most part), they're now targeting government employee unions and simpletons who don't understand what's being done them are lining up in support.
Don't be one of those.
The only "simpletons" are the sluggards in the public employee unions who know verdammt well that unlike the case with private industry, the consumer has no choice but to use their services. And I verdammt sure consider the Obama propaganda being spoon-fed in our classrooms as an inferior product.
When I did carry a union card (UFCW - AFL/CIO) back in the 1980's, I was also trying to build a sideline business. I would have been delighted to hold my union job on a seasonal basis, but the union wanted no part of the plan.
(That same plant, BTW, with the union's co-operation, now hires non-union help for the summer and Holiday peaks -- at $4/hr below the union scale. Senior employees are being weeded out when unable to keep up with the fast pace, and many of my former co-workers believe that it's just a matter of time before the product will be outsourced and the plant closed. But they also understand that the union has painted them into a corner where their only option is to play out the string.)
Unions have deteriorated into a cesspool of failures who have only class warfare to sell, under the blatant lie of "solidarity". Fewer and fewer of us are buying.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 08-01-2012 at 04:21 AM..
The only "simpletons" are the sluggards in the public employee unions who know verdammt well that unlike the case with private industry, the consumer has no choice but to use their services. And I verdammt sure consider the Obama propaganda being spoon-fed in our classrooms as an inferior product.
When I did carry a union card (UFCW - AFL/CIO) back in the 1980's, I was also trying to build a sideline business. I would have been delighted to hold my union job on a seasonal basis, but the union wanted no part of the plan.
(That same plant, BTW, with the union's co-operation, now hires non-union help for the summer and Holiday peaks -- at $4/hr below the union scale. Senior employees are being weeded out when unable to keep up with the fast pace, and many of my former co-workers believe that it's just a matter of time before the product will be outsourced and the plant closed. But they also understand that the union has painted them into a corner where their only option is to play out the string.)
Unions have deteriorated into a cesspool of failures who have only class warfare to sell, under the blatant lie of "solidarity". Fewer and fewer of us are buying.
Wouldn't reforming the unions from inside be a better option than just simply shutting them down? If they're eliminated, who gains by that?
Ben and Jerry's is one of a handful of businesses which can afford to do this because their clientele consists primarily of upscale, generally-single (and very pseudo-liberal) people who can afford to soothe their conscience by spending a little extra for an indulgence that fits their fantasies of how things ought to be, rather than how they really are.
Unions today are confined to a handful of very heavy industries (oil and chemicals, electric utilities, railroads) where the amount of capital invested per worker is very large, AND where the potential for very expensive accidents allows the employer to demand, and get, the most safety-conscious labor force available, in return for higher pay.
The rest of us have to live in the real world (seeking the lowest price; can you spell W-A-L-M-A-R-T, boys and girls) Any attempt to legislate those "wage ratios" in Lefty fantasies into the law of the land will merely drive more jobs overseas. It's time to grow up!
Your entire post has NOTHING to do with the postal office and it's workers.
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