Quote:
Originally Posted by usc619
I AM A UNION WORKER, I am not the problem. Teachers, police officers, paramedics, firefighters, road workers, construction trades, etc. are NOT the enemy. If you're jealous of our benefits, FIGHT FOR YOUR OWN!, not against ours. The rich who created this crisis are putting middle class families against each other. We live here, pay taxes, work hard & try to support our families too.
That being said... Walker please let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya  |
I have this feeling that almost all union workers have no real concept of economics.
It is not that I'm jealous of union workers. I was one, and I have plenty of friends who are union workers now. In fact, most union workers are nice people, and genuinely wish everyone could be part of a union, so everyone can enjoy the benefits of working for a union.
The problem is, union workers simply don't understand reality.
The reality is, humans in regards to economics, are like an ant farm. There are only going to be so many workers, and there is only going to be so much that can be produced from those workers. Even if ants were getting paid money for their work, they can't necessarily become any better off if all of them at the same time suddenly started getting paid more. Sure, there would be more money, but there wouldn't be any more stuff, so prices would simply go up.
The reality is, union workers demanding higher wages and receiving them does only one thing, it allows them access to a disproportionate amount of the goods that are produced, because there is not an increase in productivity as their wages go up. The real result of unions demanding higher wages, is that they make the workers in all non-union jobs more and more poor in comparison.
The only way this isn't true, is if by raising wages or bettering working conditions, that you can somehow increase productivity. And if by raising wages or bettering working conditions increased productivity, there would be no reason to unionize to begin with, because companies would adopt those policies to be more competitive. A great example is Henry Ford and his car company, who vastly increased worker pay to retain skilled employees who could produce more at higher quality. Yet, Henry Ford was one of the staunchest of foes to the unions.
With that said, I am fine with private-sector unions, as long as they can exist on their own. But the reality is that, almost all unions in this country exist to some extent because of government intervention, special privileges, tax incentives, and bailouts. Public-sector unions are a silly concept, because there is no market for them to compete in. Whatever we decide public-sector union workers should be paid, is completely arbitrary and political, not economic. And the existence of those unions tends to artificially inflate wages in those fields, while generally becoming more and more dysfunctional as a result.
The truth is, public-sector unions are not fighting some greedy capitalist for better compensation. Public-sector unions are actually fighting us for higher wages. They are basically demanding we raise taxes to pay them better and better, without actually asking us the taxpayers and letting us vote on it. They are really the opposite of democracy, and the opposite of market economics. And they really make absolutely no sense.
As for the rich. I think people misunderstand how exactly the rich become rich, and why it even matters.
Does it really matter if I have a million dollars in assets or a trillion dollars in assets? And if I had a trillion dollars, would it be in cash sitting on my desk? Or would it be invested? Invested in what exactly? Stocks? Probably stocks in a company right? And owning a stock in a company is like owning part of the company, and the companies assets. And a company assets might be what? Factories maybe? Farms? Tractors? Places to buy food? I mean, someone has to actually own all those things right? How much do you think it would cost to build a nuclear power plant anyway? If you saved every penny you made in your entire life, would it be enough to build a power plant?
I have an obsession with real estate, and I had a dream that I would someday create safe low-cost high-efficiency rental housing for well-behaved poor people and families. I've always felt that real estate was incredibly overpriced, mostly as a result of criminals tending to be poor, so by artificially raising the price of real estate, you are creating a sort of invisible wall to keep out criminals. The problem is that, poor areas then tend to be greatly overpopulated with criminals, which hurts the poor who are good people.
I feel like, in a lot of places, there are no good options for many poor to provide a safe environment for themselves and their children, and I wanted to provide that on a large scale by buying up large tracts of low-priced land and developing it at minimal costs and at nearly zero profit margin, then passing very strict behavior guidelines for applicants and renters, and possibly a sort of neighborhood council that could work to evict problem tenants based on those guidelines.
If my plan had been successful, ultimately I would have personally owned those properties, which probably would have been deemed far more valuable in regards to asset valuation than what I paid for them. If that plan had worked, I could have someday owned billions in assets. But is that a bad thing or a good thing?
If you subtract the government, coercion, or fraud from the situation. The only way for someone to become rich, is by creating something that other people are willing to buy. But in this country, the way to get rich is to get government contracts or protections, and to abuse government loopholes and regulations to your benefit.
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