Another victory for the unions!

[Wilber]

So what? Bankruptcy is provided for in tax law, and is often the best strategy to reduce liabilities.

Well done. He just screwed the employees, share holders and the creditors. Give that man a bonus.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Wilber

[bush_cheney2004]

Well done. He just screwed the employees, share holders and the creditors. Give that man a bonus.

Well, at least one person won't be whining all the way home. And he lived happily ever after......

Edited November 21, 2012 by bush_cheney2004

[Wilber]

Well, at least one person won't be whining all the way home. And he lived happily ever after......

He should be proud.

[bush_cheney2004]

He should be proud.

What do you want "him" to do? Hang himself?

[Wilber]

What do you want "him" to do? Hang himself?

No, I just don't know why anyone would want to make excuses for him.

[bush_cheney2004]

No, I just don't know why anyone would want to make excuses for him.

Because that's how businesses work. No balls, no blue chips. The union workers organize to leverage identical reward(s), deserved or not.

[dre]

Cause.

Effect.

You just made my point for me. Economic growth gave people the power to demand more rights/privileges. Yes people are now born into relative privilege. We're arguing about the people who are fighting for more rights/privileges in a shrinking economy, we're not talking about the early 1900s.

No what that clearly shows is that economic growth did nothing to improve the lives of workers until workers across the country won the right to negotiate for wages and working conditions. This is what caused the income gap to shrink in Canada and the US after the war, and this is the reason we have a middle class.

Now that workers are losing power, we are seeing that trend reversed. Growth continues, but wages are stagnant and we are once again concentrating wealth.

Like I said... take a little bit of time to read about the history of wages, working conditions and organized labor, and all these fallacies that you subscribe to will dissolve rather quickly.

[CPCFTW]

Now that workers are losing power, we are seeing that trend reversed. Growth continues, but wages are stagnant and we are once again concentrating wealth.

Like I said... take a little bit of time to read about the history of wages, working conditions and organized labor, and all these fallacies that you subscribe to will dissolve rather quickly.

You're getting it backwards again. First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.

Why is everyone moving from a DB to DC or no pension plan? Because the global slowdown made DB plans unaffordable.

Workers lose their power/confidence when people around them are getting fired/laid off and stuck on unemployment for years. Workers have the power to demand higher wages/benefits when employers are lining up to hire people and few people are unemployed. It's a really simple concept.

I'm not arguing that workers don't have to fight to get better benefits, working conditions, etc. I'm arguing that they can only win those fights if there is growth/wealth creation. The fight for a share of that growth is not the cause of growth. Growth/wealth creation is the cause, more worker rights is the effect.

Again you made my point for me: workers are losing much of that power after a big and prolonged recession.

[dre]

You're getting it backwards again. First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.

Why is everyone moving from a DB to DC or no pension plan? Because the global slowdown made DB plans unaffordable.

Workers lose their power/confidence when people around them are getting fired/laid off and stuck on unemployment for years. Workers have the power to demand higher wages/benefits when employers are lining up to hire people and few people are unemployed. It's a really simple concept.

I'm not arguing that workers don't have to fight to get better benefits, working conditions, etc. I'm arguing that they can only win those fights if there is growth/wealth creation. The fight for a share of that growth is not the cause of growth. Growth/wealth creation is the cause, more worker rights is the effect.

Again you made my point for me: workers are losing much of that power after a big and prolonged recession.

Thats the same argument I just destroyed multiple times.

First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.

And thats completely false.

[CPCFTW]

Thats the same argument I just destroyed multiple times.

And thats completely false.

Maybe in lefty la-la land.

[dre]

Maybe in lefty la-la land.

THen back this statement up...

First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.

Have fun.

[CPCFTW]

THen back this statement up...

Have fun.

It's called austerity these days. You may have heard of it.

What happened to retiring at 65? What happened to guaranteed raises and bankable sick days? What's going on in Greece and Europe right now? How are median incomes doing in the US? What effect will the fiscal cliff have on entitlement spending? Will the "safety net" be as strong? How about those Chinese worker rights.. Is that what kick started the Chinese economy or was it adopting free market principles with minimal worker rights?

[dre]

It's called austerity these days. You may have heard of it.

What happened to retiring at 65? What happened to guaranteed raises and bankable sick days? What's going on in Greece and Europe right now? How are median incomes doing in the US? What effect will the fiscal cliff have on entitlement spending? Will the "safety net" be as strong? How about those Chinese worker rights.. Is that what kick started the Chinese economy or was it adopting free market principles with minimal worker rights?

Your post has nothing to do with anything.

You claimed that "First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.", but workers have been losing power for over 30 years. This isnt something that started to happen in 2007.

[CPCFTW]

Your post has nothing to do with anything.

You claimed that "First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.", but workers have been losing power for over 30 years. This isnt something that started to happen in 2007.

It accelerated in 2007.

I'm not sure what power you're talking about, but that's probably a result of globalization and having to compete with foreign workers.

[Pliny]

No North America became the wealthiest continent on the planet BECAUSE laborers fought for good pay and good working conditions. Thats what allowed us to build the gigantic middle class thats responsible for all the consumption that accounts for the majority of our economy.

Good pay and good working conditions do not come out of anything but the created wealth from productive activities. The wealth must exist prior to its division, that's the simplicity of the matter. You don't get workers demanding and getting wealth that does not exist and then it's produced later.....unless you are in 2012 and believe resolving poverty and destitution is a simple matter of printing up more "money" or food stamps - who needs production? Yahoo! We are all on our way to prosperity.

The uprising you cite in Winnipeg was a political uprising to fight for power of the Unions and was not about anything else. Union activists incited those riots telling workers they were getting shafted and Unions and collective bargaining were essential to getting better labour conditions. Unions needed legislation to grant them the power of representation and a few other things like not being able to replace striking workers. Unions needed some teeth in their bargaining power. They managed to get some using the effective tactic of bullying and threatening to bring about the worker's collective wrath upon the country. The CCF was of course Canada's socialist party and its crowning achievement was the implementation of our current universal healthcare act.

After WWI, essentially the end of the European Monarchical era, socialism, a popular ideology among intellectuals became mainstream, promoting the crushing of the bourgeoisie and the concept of government redistribution of wealth, Unions were a part of the movement to enable that even gaining a foothold in the USA. All through the twenties Europe struggled with socialist factions, from Hitler and Mussolini to Stalin, Trotsky and Lenin. Now Europe had democracies without any Monarchical powers overseeing, or minimally intervening, in the governing of the country. The people had power. It might be said that democracies are a more economical road to the total state than the revolutionary means of Communism. The people voting themselves privilege from the State will guarantee the State's health and progressive growth until it is too late and we all live under tyranny somehow with the best healthcare in the world.

[Pliny]

You claimed that "First there was a recession/slowdown, then workers starting losing power.", but workers have been losing power for over 30 years. This isnt something that started to happen in 2007.

Workers haven't been losing power. However, Unions have been by destroying the jobs they are supposed to be protecting.

[Michael Hardner]

Good pay and good working conditions do not come out of anything but the created wealth from productive activities. The wealth must exist prior to its division, that's the simplicity of the matter.

The wealth doesn't exist beforehand. The enterprise produces wealth, which is to be shared. The owner of the enterprise and the employee enter into an agreement to share the proceeds of the wealth.

The people voting themselves privilege from the State will guarantee the State's health and progressive growth until it is too late and we all live under tyranny somehow with the best healthcare in the world.

Except... this isn't matched by reality: the state will not necessarily grow progressively. Deregulation, and loosening labour standards have meant that the wealthiest are gaining rewards while they are required to share less and less with employees who work for them. You wouldn't know it, though, by the amount of complaining you hear.

The way it works is: the state sets up the rules, which includes rules that govern investors and rules that govern how employees must be treated minimally. Some win, and some lose - but the idea is that the economy should generally benefit everyone.

What we're seeing is that as more and more people fall into the class of lowest earners (and this is bound to happen, because workers can hardly form combines ie. unions anymore) and as those lowest earners do NOT see real gains, and as more and more power falls into the wealthiest, we will see more socialism take root. We also have the odd circumstance where the wealthy are now saying that the lowest earners are to blame for these results.

At some point, though, real socialism will come back if the trend isn't reversed - and I'm not just talking about paltry welfare and social assistance handouts that the Democrats push for. The US has a strong populism that takes generations to turn itself around - this is the country of Huey Long, FDR and such let's not forget.

[Shady]

Except that the times of Long and FDR were some of the least prosperous, except for the rich.

[bush_cheney2004]

What we're seeing is that as more and more people fall into the class of lowest earners....

This is not true on a global scale, as far more people have been lifted out of chronic poverty, a term defined by the very economic "exceptionalism" of western wealth. "More people"...where?

[dre]

What we're seeing is that as more and more people fall into the class of lowest earners (and this is bound to happen, because workers can hardly form combines ie. unions anymore) and as those lowest earners do NOT see real gains, and as more and more power falls into the wealthiest, we will see more socialism take root.

This is exactly right, and thats the real worry yeah. Stacked-deck crony capitalism will make people think mistakenly that "capitalism doesnt work", and we could take a fair wild swing to the left. This is exactly Chavez got elected.

[Bonam]

What we're seeing is that as more and more people fall into the class of lowest earners

Care to define this class of "lowest earners" and provide data showing the proportion of people in this class over time? The usual definition I see of "lowest earners" is bottom quintile, and that by definition is constant at 20%. Or do you mean the proportion of people making minimum wage? If so, see Table 10 here, which shows that the % of people making minimum wage or lower is near historical lows after declining continuously for almost 30 years (it was lowest in 2006 and has risen slightly since then, but note that it actually fell again from 2010 to 2011 as we entered the recovery from the recession).

We often see claims about how the "middle class is disappearing" or how the "average American is being impoverished", and yet I have never seen numbers that actually provide credence to these claims. Yes, the top earners are gaining wealth faster than everyone else, but that doesn't mean everyone else is being impoverished.

[bush_cheney2004]

.....We often see claims about how the "middle class is disappearing" or how the "average American is being impoverished", and yet I have never seen numbers that actually provide credence to these claims. Yes, the top earners are gaining wealth faster than everyone else, but that doesn't mean everyone else is being impoverished.

Yes, and further to your point, the so called "working poor" and "lower class" in America have standards of living above those of "middle class" Europeans if one accepts the American definition of such standards.

[dre]

Care to define this class of "lowest earners" and provide data showing the proportion of people in this class over time? The usual definition I see of "lowest earners" is bottom quintile, and that by definition is constant at 20%. Or do you mean the proportion of people making minimum wage? If so, see Table 10 here, which shows that the % of people making minimum wage or lower is near historical lows after declining continuously for almost 30 years (it was lowest in 2006 and has risen slightly since then, but note that it actually fell again from 2010 to 2011 as we entered the recovery from the recession).

We often see claims about how the "middle class is disappearing" or how the "average American is being impoverished", and yet I have never seen numbers that actually provide credence to these claims. Yes, the top earners are gaining wealth faster than everyone else, but that doesn't mean everyone else is being impoverished.

I wouldnt say that "everyone else is impoverished", but theres a fair ammount of data that demonstrates the middle class is shrinking and getting relatively poorer.

66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in low paying service jobs.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

[dre]

But even if you dont find the current situation alarming, then consider the trend. The top couple of % control twice as big a share of the pie as they did 15 years ago. Project that out another 10 years, and another 10. The course we are on leads to complete and total monopolization of wealth (and political power) by a tiny minority within the next coupld of decades. And if THIS doesnt alarm you, try to find a stable non-authoritarian society that has managed to stay stable, with that type of allocation of wealth.

[Michael Hardner]

Except that the times of Long and FDR were some of the least prosperous, except for the rich.

Yes, kind of like today. A lengthy recession/depression with few prospects. When the economy turned around though it provided opportunity for many not just a few.