Wisconsin Takes A Stand For Fiscal Sanity

[KrazyHorse]

They also bid up the price of labour for private enterprise, no?

Given the stagnation of middleclass incomes over the last many years (I could be mistakren, but that's what I recall) that can't be a bad thing.

In fact, it might be argued that the public at large has an interest in creating a more highly paid public workforce to help inflate both the private sector and consumer spending. *ducks*

1) Stop trying to do macro analysis. You don't have the knowledge or intuition to think usefully about it (even I'm only now getting to the point where I think I can offer some insight)
2) Inflating the wages of the relatively well-off at the expense of everybody else is, as previously stated, repugnant. It reduces both efficiency and equality.

[notyoueither]

It can also be a long term proposition for people to retrain themselves to seek new employment. Or, they could be too old and not be attractive to any new employer. Labour mobility is not as easy as some would have us believe.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander?

Err...what the **** sort of analysis are you doing in which you've decided to equate:

1) a change in underlying demand for certain skills

with

2) an enormously distortive privilege granted by legislation creating monopolies for suppliers of labor

???

I suspect it is some kind of naive fairness argument.

Take the lumber industry in BC. There are less than ten major companies. If you are a faller, you work in the system of one of those hand-full of companies (mostly). Learning to be a faller (who lives) is a multi year investment. You cannot take those skills off to the oil patch in Alberta.

If it were not for joint stock companies, there would be hundreds of times more employers than there are.

I do not see that it is unreasonable for labour to organise to meet the greater organisation of capital.

Labour being able to organise is a reasonable answer to the concentration of employment opportunities due to joint stock companies and the capital markets. The unions are still in check due to the fact that lumber is produced in many places in the world. That is fair, in my books.

[notyoueither]

1) Stop trying to do macro analysis. You don't have the knowledge or intuition to think usefully about it (even I'm only now getting to the point where I think I can offer some insight)
2) Inflating the wages of the relatively well-off at the expense of everybody else is, as previously stated, repugnant. It reduces both efficiency and equality.

It does not just benefit government employees, especially if they could be dismissed for incompetence. It benefits everyone who has to be paid more to keep the best from ****ing off to be a government employee.

[notyoueither]

an enormously distortive privilege granted by legislation creating monopolies for suppliers of labor

And this is an interesting point, because we also have legislation that grants priviledge to firms that can use the capital markets to raise funds to operate and expand. I don't disagree with these policies because they help protect lambs from sharks. However, it seems that there are more monopolies than just the unions.

[MrFun]

What nonsense. I survived on approximately full-time minimum wage for the first couple of years of graduate school. I had enough money to own a car (1992 Toyota Camry) and eat at restaurants and drink at bars 1-2 nights a week.

I don't know how you did it.

Back when I was still in graduate school working on my thesis, I had to live with a friend and pay him a much more modest rent while I worked at Super Target, and taught as an adjunct. I could only pay my friend $200 a month while continuing to pay the bills that I already pay each month.

There was no way I could afford even a crappy apartment for, say, $370 a month.

[MrFun]

And I haven't even brought up how difficult it is for a family where the wage earner(s) are all working on only minimum wage. Hence, why many families on minimum wage still qualify for such things as food stamps.

[giblets]

I don't know how you did it.

I'm guessing he didn't have to support a family. In that case minimum wage is well above the federal poverty level.

[MrFun]

Even as a single guy, my monthly expenses would have been too much had I had my own apartment.

And there had been a couple times when living with my friend, where I could not pay him anything, due to emergency expenses - car repair, and then dental work I needed to have done.

[DaShi]

KH is making some strong arguments using only basic economic principles. While I'm not yet wholly convinced that unions don't have a positive role to play, he has made me think more about it.

A shift on this topic. KH how do you feel about worker owned companies or worker coops?

[DaShi]

I do not agree with the aversion to performance testing. Anything can be measured. In the case of teachers, you compare their performance given the quality of their students. Duh!

Fantastic! How do we do it then?

[giblets]

Even as a single guy, my monthly expenses would have been too much had I had my own apartment.

And there had been a couple times when living with my friend, where I could not pay him anything, due to emergency expenses - car repair, and then dental work I needed to have done.

Where were you? Iowa? I don't normally think of Iowa as a place with a high cost of living.

[Dinner]

That post is going to be too complicated for anybody here other than me and you.

[giblets]

Calling people idiots if they don't subscribe to your ideology

[KrazyHorse]

KH is making some strong arguments using only basic economic principles. While I'm not yet wholly convinced that unions don't have a positive role to play, he has made me think more about it.

A shift on this topic. KH how do you feel about worker owned companies or worker coops?

2 thumbs up, in principle. Agency problems at least theoretically alleviated. I have some worry that they won't be as responsive to changing conditions as public companies

[KrazyHorse]

At work, btw. Will respond to other comments later.