Why is FAIR TRADE better than FREE TRADE?

[DrZoidberg]

The robots are coming. Oh, wait... they're here already.

We're up for a momentous shift in labour. A laissez faire aproach isn't likely to work when there's such a huge a sudden shift in labour demands. A large proportion of the work force will need to be retrained very soon. This is similar in magnitude to what happened during industrialisation. The hands off aproach of the 19'th century led to extreme pain and political instability all over the west. From history we know that letting the free market handle this is like asking for a United Soviets of America. Let's be smarter this time around.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54622189

Add to that the remote working paradigm is going to shift the importance and role of cities. The last 20 years we've already seen a movement where rich people have started moving to luxury enclaves isolated far out in the sticks. Villages where they can live, work and raise families. This is now spreading to the middle-class. Especially IT professionals. Crypto currencies allow rich people to hide their wealth and hide their economic dealings. Governments will have less tools (ie taxes) than now to protect the armies of poor and unemployable.

We're in for a bumpy ride folks. Buckle up.

 

[DBT]

FAIR TRADE = Something somewhere is not perfect, so launch an assault on all employers (who must be to blame for it) and drive up the cost of living for everyone.

.
When I said luxuries I didn't mean BMW's, Porshes or Mansions on the Hill.

I meant my luxuries for working class people, a cafe meal, a few beers at the pub, a night at the movies, etc.

OK, maybe there's something to complain about here. Someone somewhere is a little short and has to forego the extra night out, the extra movie or beer at the pub. Probably everyone can agree that the world is not perfect for everyone, and some folks have it a little rough. But how do we get from this to the "fair trade" solution of a kick in the butt to employers, many of whom are not in the top 1% rich and powerful? (And most of the employers kicked in the butt by "fair trade" are the smaller ones struggling to survive, which is why they try to cut costs, like labor cost.)

It's the extremely rich who spend at the high end of town with their expensive cars and mansions, which still stimulates the economy to a point, an upper end bubble with a bit of trickle down.

But are far fewer super rich than there are ordinary people struggling to make ends meet, and that's where the money is sorely needed. The super rich are not struggling.

Whatever the problem is here, assuming there is one, the solution to it is not to force employers to pay higher wages than the level set by the free market, by supply-and-demand -- higher than is paid to the sweatshop workers, e.g., paid according to what is profitable for the business. If supply-and-demand is overruled in favor of a "fair trade" theory which pities workers and forces employers to pay at a higher rate than the market level, this actually ends up making MOST workers, and almost all the population WORSE OFF rather than better off. Because it forces employers to shut down some of their production, which was made more costly and thus less profitable by this interference, and so the overall economy is made worse off than before, when all the costs were determined by the market left alone to set the wages and prices according to supply-and-demand only.

When the buyers and sellers (e.g., employers and wage-earners) are left alone to set the prices according to supply-and-demand (the natural conditions which lead to the production transactions), this produces the best results for ALL the economy, for ALL the consumers, including the poor. It's the performance of the work, or the efficiency of the production, which provides benefit for all the people, not a disruption of the work from some outside entity presuming to impose its judgment onto the buyers and sellers to overrule them.

If these players were doing something injurious to others in the society, like polluting the environment, that would be different -- in that case the outside interference is necessary in order to protect the interests of the outsiders. But when outsiders are not affected by the production going on, then the best result overall comes from leaving the players alone to do the production according to the terms they choose, each one individually choosing his/her own terms. What's good for one buyer or seller might not be good for another. No outsider is competent to interfere and impose standard terms onto ALL the buyers and sellers, as if they are a monolith, and as if the outsider is of a superior class to prescribe the True Doctrine onto the players who are inferior and incompetent to make decisions. No one has ever proved, or given any evidence, that the "fair trade" outsider is superior or more competent to set the terms of the production.

So even if some working-class persons need a beer at the pub (or movie, or whatever), and there is some legitimate need there, it doesn't follow that all employers must be punished and have costs imposed onto them which then impose costs onto ALL consumers and thus drive up the cost of living for everyone.

So you can seek a way to help that poor guy who needs better access to the pub, or to a beer, etc., but nothing is made better by scapegoating all employers as a class, because they're a minority and easy to target and beat up on in order to provide some workers better access to that beer they need. You need to take the time to find something more thoughtful than a mere knee-jerk outburst-assault against the employer class, as a scapegoat to blame, thereby driving up the cost of living for everyone.

There is no evidence that this assault on employers as a class has produced any net benefit for society.

The issue is a power imbalance between workers and employers. The inability of individual workers to leverage better pay and conditions for themselves while the big end of town shows no apparent shortage of wealth and power.

Clearly it is not workers who are 'assaulting' employers or their businesses.

A business may struggle for any number of reasons, service or product saturation, too many competitors, government regulations, taxes, etc.


The assault in this instance is shown in your attitude toward workers.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The function of wage-earners is to produce, not to serve as customers into whose ----

--- into whose pockets money is placed so they can buy stuff produced by companies who otherwise can't find customers and so are struggling to survive.

Trickle down is BS. Luxury is relative. Unlike the average low income or middle class worker, the very rich may not consider eating out as a luxury, just routine.

As I said, spending money supports in local businesses, cafes, cinemas, goods and services supports these businesses.

But at the same time, forcing these businesses to pay higher costs does the opposite of supporting them. If the point is to support businesses, then don't impose excessive labor cost onto them, above the wage level set by the market supply-and-demand.

Who, without sufficient customers spending their money on their goods and services would themselves struggle.

Businesses struggle, trying to compete and survive. Some fail because they weren't competitive enough. They fail not because the state didn't provide paying customers to them, but because they didn't offer a good-enough deal to consumers. There's no need for the state to pass laws to try to provide customers to businesses, or to put more money into someone's pockets for them to spend in order that some businesses will gain customers to serve as an outlet for their production.

It's not the state's proper role to ensure that all businesses have adequate customers to buy their stuff so that they don't have to struggle. Trying to play such a role makes the state less efficient and makes the economy worse, not better.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Seek real solutions, rather than just scapegoating employers, or pandering to wage-earners (because they're a large class).

Just because it wins applause from the idiot masses doesn't mean it solves what's wrong in the economy.

. . . My point was that people spending money in the community stimulates economic activity in that community. This is not controversial.

But if the way they get that money is by forcing the employer to pay them higher than the market value for their work, then it's an ANTIstimulus which hurts business. Artificially driving up business cost does the opposite of stimulating the economy.

. . . My point was that people spending money in the community stimulates economic activity in that community. This is not controversial.

It's basically welfare. You're arguing that they should be paid above market value to keep alive an industry that isn't viable on it's own. I agree that we should be doing this.

No, we should not be doing this.

But thinking it's helping the economy is false. It's basically another form of welfare. Also not of any value to the economy.

And so we should not do it. Why should we do something which makes the economy worse?

It's neither charity or being paid above market value.

As long as it's based only on supply-and-demand, meaning whatever the company has to pay in order to get the work done, and no more, then it's market value. It's what employers or buyers pay, or have to pay in order to attract the needed workers (or get what they want from the sellers), without any interference from the state or any other outsider.

Worker wages have steadily eroded below market value.

Yes, they've eroded, but not below market value. The market value is the wage level employers must pay in order to attract enough workers to get the needed work done, and no more. Or enough in order for them to maximize their profit. The company has less incentive to produce (and so will produce LESS) at any level which yields less than the maximum possible profit for them. If the production can be increased or decreased in order to increase profit, then it increases or decreases production accordingly.

So it's always in the company's interest to pay market value -- no more and no less. So if wages have steadily eroded, it's because the market value of their work has decreased. The company pays higher or lower according to the need for more profit. If the labor has become less necessary, or can more easily be replaced, then that labor has decreased in its market value. To claim it decreased BELOW market value, you must show that the company could increase its profit by increasing the wage level, or that its profit decreased as a result of lowering the wage level. Which is not the case. Companies have been saving on labor cost because of the decreased need for the labor, as workers were replaced by better technology and by cheap labor (or increasing supply of labor).

For example:

''One of the more important challenges confronting economic policymakers across almost all advanced economies, including Australia, is the persistently slow rate of growth in real wages — that is, after allowing for the impact of persistently low price inflation.''

''Put differently, the rise in the “profits share” of Australia’s national income (to near-record highs in recent years) reflects the fact that most of the benefits of what productivity growth Australia has experienced over the past two decades have accrued to employers, rather than employees.

That's because employers have become more valuable. Because the demand for them has increased and the supply of them has not kept up with the demand (need) for them. Whereas the supply of job-seekers has increased while the demand for them has decreased = lower value.

It’s in that sense that persistently slow growth in real wages risks “diminishing our sense of shared prosperity”, ....''
View attachment 29552

It’s in that sense that persistently slow growth in real wages risks “diminishing our sense of shared prosperity."

Maybe some such thing has diminished. What's the solution? It's partly to increase some taxes on the rich. Not to punish employers by forcing up their cost of business, e.g., their labor cost.


Higher tax on the rich:

Impose a tax on stock market transactions (tax on Wall Street)

Increase property taxes on larger estates. A GRADUATED property tax -- higher rate on higher total value of property owned.

Some increase in tax rate of upper-income categories, and reduced rate on lower-income categories. Elimination of income tax on lower levels.

Some such higher taxes could then be spent on infrastructure, education, etc., which benefits everyone = higher sense of shared prosperity.

Whereas scapegoating and punishing all employers, out of misplaced pity to the wage-earner class, diminishes the prosperity, driving down production and increasing the cost of living to everyone.


Also,

It’s in that sense that persistently slow growth in real wages risks “diminishing our sense of shared prosperity."

There may be still other explanations for this, or solutions.

E.g., the recent trend of higher and higher national debt (or increased annual deficit) is probably doing damage to the economy, and may be causing a false distribution of wealth which rewards the rich (or some of them) disproportionately. It's fine to look for the causes of any such bad trend.

But scapegoating employers is not the solution -- or simplistically demanding a higher wage level, when it's obvious that much of the lower wage level is due to decreasing value of labor in the competitive economy.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

"Bring back the factories!" etc.

The Luddites in England destroyed spinning Jennys because the technological progress was putting cottage industry weavers out of business. They were now making less money because of the same work and didn't think it was fair.

Here's something related:

Jobs Created by ELIMINATING Wind Power *

Last year a wind-powered sawmill was built near the Strand, London. (The Strand is a major road following the Thames River.) Apparently it has been such a successful business that a lot of sawyers are out of work. (A sawyer is a man who saws wood by hand.) King Charles the 1st of England is fighting an economic slump so he demolishes the sawmill in order to quell a possible riot and puts the sawyers back to work.
http://tspwiki.com/index.php?title=1634#Jobs_Created_by_ELIMINATING_Wind_Power_.2A

How many more examples of this might pop up?

This is why we need to be suspicious of "job creation" rhetoric, and those who pontificate,

"Jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs!"

 

[DrZoidberg]

And so we should not do it. Why should we do something which makes the economy worse?

There are other values more important than just making money off people. San Francisco has had an IT boom enriching its citizens, while they have the largest proportion of homeless people. Family men are sometimes locked into staying in a city because of dependants that can't be moved. It's very common. It's these people who make up San Franciscos homeless population.

Sometimes the economy moves faster than people and culture.

The free market reforms of Jeltsin where good for the Russian economy long term. But the trauma it caused the people opened the door for Putin's takeover.

A friend of mine was headhunted (from Sweden) by Microsoft to be a senior manager in Seattle. An extremely well paying job. But one of his sons developed leukaemia. The treatments made them broke. They moved back to Sweden where the state covers medical bills. His son is healthy now. But he'll never move back to USA. For moral reasons. Today he's the president of a Danish IT company. Yes, he'd make more money in USA but got turned off by their medical non-system.

There are plenty of reasons to sometimes have polycies that harm the economy. Some moral values are higher.

Fundamentaly it comes down to that we're nothing but a bunch of naked monkeys driven by instincts that aren't always helpful. But by not obeying our urges we will be unhappy. The love for our children is one like this. I think our political systems should take this into consideration

 

[DBT]

Just because it wins applause from the idiot masses doesn't mean it solves what's wrong in the economy.




But if the way they get that money is by forcing the employer to pay them higher than the market value for their work, then it's an ANTIstimulus which hurts business. Artificially driving up business cost does the opposite of stimulating the economy.

It's basically welfare. You're arguing that they should be paid above market value to keep alive an industry that isn't viable on it's own. I agree that we should be doing this.

No, we should not be doing this.

But thinking it's helping the economy is false. It's basically another form of welfare. Also not of any value to the economy.

And so we should not do it. Why should we do something which makes the economy worse?

It's neither charity or being paid above market value.

As long as it's based only on supply-and-demand, meaning whatever the company has to pay in order to get the work done, and no more, then it's market value. It's what employers or buyers pay, or have to pay in order to attract the needed workers (or get what they want from the sellers), without any interference from the state or any other outsider.

Worker wages have steadily eroded below market value.

Yes, they've eroded, but not below market value. The market value is the wage level employers must pay in order to attract enough workers to get the needed work done, and no more. Or enough in order for them to maximize their profit. The company has less incentive to produce (and so will produce LESS) at any level which yields less than the maximum possible profit for them. If the production can be increased or decreased in order to increase profit, then it increases or decreases production accordingly.

So it's always in the company's interest to pay market value -- no more and no less. So if wages have steadily eroded, it's because the market value of their work has decreased. The company pays higher or lower according to the need for more profit. If the labor has become less necessary, or can more easily be replaced, then that labor has decreased in its market value. To claim it decreased BELOW market value, you must show that the company could increase its profit by increasing the wage level, or that its profit decreased as a result of lowering the wage level. Which is not the case. Companies have been saving on labor cost because of the decreased need for the labor, as workers were replaced by better technology and by cheap labor (or increasing supply of labor).

For example:

''One of the more important challenges confronting economic policymakers across almost all advanced economies, including Australia, is the persistently slow rate of growth in real wages — that is, after allowing for the impact of persistently low price inflation.''

''Put differently, the rise in the “profits share” of Australia’s national income (to near-record highs in recent years) reflects the fact that most of the benefits of what productivity growth Australia has experienced over the past two decades have accrued to employers, rather than employees.

That's because employers have become more valuable. Because the demand for them has increased and the supply of them has not kept up with the demand (need) for them. Whereas the supply of job-seekers has increased while the demand for them has decreased = lower value.

It’s in that sense that persistently slow growth in real wages risks “diminishing our sense of shared prosperity”, ....''
View attachment 29552

It’s in that sense that persistently slow growth in real wages risks “diminishing our sense of shared prosperity."

Maybe some such thing has diminished. What's the solution? It's partly to increase some taxes on the rich. Not to punish employers by forcing up their cost of business, e.g., their labor cost.


Higher tax on the rich:

Impose a tax on stock market transactions (tax on Wall Street)

Increase property taxes on larger estates. A GRADUATED property tax -- higher rate on higher total value of property owned.

Some increase in tax rate of upper-income categories, and reduced rate on lower-income categories. Elimination of income tax on lower levels.

Some such higher taxes could then be spent on infrastructure, education, etc., which benefits everyone = higher sense of shared prosperity.

Whereas scapegoating and punishing all employers, out of misplaced pity to the wage-earner class, diminishes the prosperity, driving down production and increasing the cost of living to everyone.


Also,

It’s in that sense that persistently slow growth in real wages risks “diminishing our sense of shared prosperity."

There may be still other explanations for this, or solutions.

E.g., the recent trend of higher and higher national debt (or increased annual deficit) is probably doing damage to the economy, and may be causing a false distribution of wealth which rewards the rich (or some of them) disproportionately. It's fine to look for the causes of any such bad trend.

But scapegoating employers is not the solution -- or simplistically demanding a higher wage level, when it's obvious that much of the lower wage level is due to decreasing value of labor in the competitive economy.

What I said had nothing to do with scapegoating employers.

The issue has been explained enough times.

Yet every time the problem has been explained and supported with real life examples and stats, your response is just like nothing was ever said.

Once again;

Summary

''What this report finds: The increased focus on growing inequality has led to an increased focus on CEO pay. Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages. Average pay of CEOs at the top 350 firms in 2018 was $17.2 million—or $14.0 million using a more conservative measure. (Stock options make up a big part of CEO pay packages, and the conservative measure values the options when granted, versus when cashed in, or “realized.”) CEO compensation is very high relative to typical worker compensation (by a ratio of 278-to-1 or 221-to-1). In contrast, the CEO-to-typical-worker compensation ratio (options realized) was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 58-to-1 in 1989. CEOs are even making a lot more—about five times as much—as other earners in the top 0.1%. From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.

Why it matters: Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills. This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%. The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or taxed more).''

Of course the issue of inequality is deeper and broader than this, but CEO income illustrates the point.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

What's not "fair" about just letting free-market supply-and-demand determine every producer's legitimate value? e.g. wage etc.?

You're just repeating what I'm saying. The reason is because increasingly productivity comes from capital, not labour. So the wages are following actual market value. Nothing is wrong in the graph. Workers ARE being paid a fair wage, based on what they are contributing. You can argue that they should have more than their fair share. But then you should be aware that you are manipulating market value, and that never ends well.

Capital doesn't do anything without a worker doing something to manipulate it, so you're wrong on your first point.

"doing something to MANIPULATE it"? "manipulate" capital? Is that what the worker is doing when he pulls that lever?

Is something funny happening here to Zoid's "manipulating" word? I think the meaning has to be something like:

"But then you should be aware that you are distorting what "market value" really is, and . . ."

or

"But then you should be aware that you are disregarding supply-and-demand, and competition, which determine the true "value" -- the "market value" of the labor, or of anything else bought and sold in the market, and . . ."

or

"But then you should be aware that you are disregarding the need for incentive to whoever really produced the contribution/benefit to the company and society and who alone is entitled to the "fair share" in the proceeds from it.

I.e., it's only that real contribution which constitutes the (increased) "value" of a producer/worker. Meaning whoever produced the change in production to make the company perform better, which doesn't include every employee who happens to be in that company.

Perhaps it's true in some cases that a particular worker added something special to make the product more valuable. But not in other cases (probably most), because the decisions to improve the production did not come from the wage-earners, but from directors or other planners not part of the mainline worker/wage-earner sector. So it's only much higher-level directors, or maybe managers or specialized elite workers who made the decisions and added the extra value.


New technology > improved production > more profit > reward to -- to --
how about to the janitor who cleans the floor? How can the company manufacture without clean floors?

It's only those particular producers who made the changes who are entitled to the reward for the good performance or the improved production bringing in extra revenue. It's only Crybaby Economics which insists that ALL the workers/wage-earners are entitled to a "share" in the extra profits from the improved production.

How do you figure that a company making improvements, such as adopting new technology, causing much increased sales and profits, is somehow indebted to the lower-level factory workers for those improvements? All the latter did was get new training, from the elitists who produced the new technology, so they're showed how to operate the new machines. Machines which they did not produce.

In cases where those low-level workers really did make some contribution, such as suggestions which were followed, the company has every incentive to take that into account, to give encouragement to future such contribution. There's no reason to assume companies don't in fact do this, and where it seems workers are getting no reward from the improved technology, then the reason is that they contributed nothing, or so little as to be negligible, because the real source of the improvements was from much higher-level specialists, and elitist planners, who had special talent and knowledge which they put to use in order to create the improved production.

If there's a case where the workers are not getting their "fair share" of the profits from improved production, the burden of proof is on the complainer, to show what specific contribution those workers made, and show how the company gains something by ignoring that contribution.


Reward merit only, not just membership in a class.

To merely say the "worker" is entitled to a "fair share" automatically, whenever there is any improvement and higher profit, is to reject supply-and-demand, and to reject market-based capitalism, and instead to promote a "share-the-wealth" dogma demanding pity toward the less competitive and lower-level members of the operation. I.e., as a gesture toward them, out of pity, because the poor devils need something to be tossed their way for the sake of good feelings. But not out of a need to promote better production and make the economy better. For that we need the competitive market which rewards only performance, and does not dole out "rewards" to the lower-level and low-producing members, because "fair trade" demands that we have to feel sorry for the poor bastards.

You're complaining about market manipulation yet employers are constantly practicing it in their own favor.

More Crybaby Economics. To simply scapegoat an entire class of people because they're a minority is immature. The word "manipulation" has to mean something negative, or something harmful to the economy, or some kind of bad behavior. Yet it's not true that ALL employers are guilty of any such thing, whatever you mean by "manipulation."

And everyone acts "in their own favor" in the economy. You can't name any class or sector who is acting against "their own favor" in their decision-making and exercise of power. And not all employers have disproportionate power to exercise, as many of them are struggling to survive, and they are driven more than others to try to cut costs, including labor cost. You cannot condemn someone for trying to cut costs in order to survive, which many companies do.

Again it appears that "fair trade" simply means to scapegoat employers as a class, to condemn them for some unnamed crime ("manipulating") they commit against "the workers" or "the employees" who are some kind of downtrodden victim class. And none of this makes sense except as a broad-brush assault on the entire employer class simply because this group is a convenient target, while the victim wage-earner class is urged to rise up against the oppressive guilty "employers" whose crime is that they are employers, who are the single class which is not supposed to act in their own interest as all other classes do.

You say market manipulation never ends well, neither does the system of royalty vs. peasant/serf.

More employer-bashing and slander of this class, without naming what they are guilty of, and assuming they are protected by law as privileged, which they are not, and that they are oppressing someone by forcing them against their will.

Our market system of FREE TRADE (most of our current economics) -- based on individual free choice and supply-and-demand and competition and "market only" setting prices and wages -- is a system which "ends well" by every test or standard you can imagine, for judging an economic system, according to performance and the results it produces.

But the "FAIR TRADE" critique of this is based not on the aim of improving the overall performance, for everyone in the economy or society, but rather on an obsession with certain wage-earners who are to be pitied, and on scapegoating the employers of these particular high-profile workers, for dramatic and symbolic effect only. It is typical to focus in on steel workers and auto workers and textile workers, and some other factory production, also some farm workers, who are put in the spotlight, as heroic symbols to use, for aesthetic appeal rather than to drive the whole economy toward better performance to everyone's benefit.

Preferable to "Crybaby Economics" it might be called "Soap Opera Economics" to promote a narrative or storyline for use in romance novels and dramatic presentations, for film and theatre etc., and for sermonizing and moralizing, to stir up feelings and emotions and compassion for victim archetypes. This obsession, and the scapegoating of the "villains" of the story, ends up leading to an overall decreased economic performance by producers generally, because when the market sets prices driven by supply-and-demand only, it produces the best results for everyone, despite a few high-profile players who are forced to struggle to keep up with the competition, and who succeed in capturing extra attention to their struggle, to the disregard of a far greater number who are thus stomped under by the soap opera, which sacrifices them for the sake of the melodrama entertainment appeal.

This melodrama and sermonizing and victim-obsession aesthetics is the essence of "fair trade" and is the only argument why "fair trade" is better than "free trade." No one posting here has given any other argument.

12 Ways Companies Manipulate Employees (W/ Examples)

This promo is mostly Crybaby Economics, as far as it tries to judge companies as guilty of something. The author of this advertisement himself is a manipulator offering a class to others to teach them how to be good manipulators. He's probably close to being in the Trump University category, though probably not that extreme.

To "manipulate" is something everyone does to everyone else. It arguably becomes fraudulent (and thus criminal) when those manipulated are programmed to do something they would refuse to do if they were fully conscious of the manipulation and/or if there's damage caused by it (as in being ripped off paying for something advertised falsely). It's mainly a voluntary manipulation which we all agree to in our normal interaction with others, not just an employer.

It can be fraudulent is some cases, but normally it's not. To blame or condemn only employers for manipulating someone is just one more example of scapegoating. The only reason to single out large companies as "guilty" of "manipulating" is that they have invested more in it, and do it more scientifically, or more effectively, than others who manipulate. But something cannot be judged wrong only because in this case the perpetrators do it more effectively than others who weren't as good at it. If it produces results which are not criminal, then it's legitimate, just as ordinary people manipulate each other every day, and it's normally not criminal.

Government manipulates its employees, and obviously all branches of the Armed Forces rely on manipulation of members, from the lowest- to the highest-ranked. Such manipulation is generally known, and it's accepted because of the desirable results it produces. In cases of abuse there can be criminal proceedings.

 

[DBT]

If workers are generating wealth for society, doing necessary work, they earn a share in the wealth they help to create. The situation is that workers are not getting their fair share (market value) of the wealth they help to produce....which flows rapidly upward to the big end of town.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

WORKERS vs EMPLOYERS class-warfare is a false paradigm for explaining where the economy went wrong.

You are reading this on a Web browser. Once programmed, the web browser generates money continually without the need of a programmer. VBulletin board similarly needs to be programmed once, then continuously pulls in cash.

In what way are the workers necessary to manipulate these?

Wow, so much obtuseness.

You never get bug fixes and security updates in your web browser? Those were created by workers. What version number is your browser up to now? All of those created by workers.

Stop it! This is not about "workers" as a whole class. It's about "these workers" and "those workers" -- i.e., the more valuable competitive workers vs. the less valuable less competitive workers. ALL workers are not in the same homogeneous class, all being equally competitive or uncompetitive, all equally low-value or high-value, all being exploited or not being exploited, all "wage-slaves" or all non-"wage-slaves," etc. No, some "workers" or wage-earners are doing well and are being paid more because their value has increased. But this is probably a minority of the total labor force. If you can point out some which have kept pace, and are in greater demand because they're more competitive, then these are not the ones in those statistics showing the stagnant wages.

The higher-value workers who do contribute to the improved production and who are in greater demand are in the upper-middle or higher-income brackets.

This is about the fact that many (NOT ALL) wage-earners today, or in recent times, have experienced stagnant wages, due to the increased competition, from globalism and cheap labor, so there is a general widening gap between the traditional mainline workers and the rich (or top 10% or top 1%).


Demagoguery -- obsessing on select high-profile victims

The traditional factory workers, or Trump's targeted steel workers and auto workers and other specially-selected victims, are among those who have sunk down toward the lower end, toward the unskilled workers at the bottom, and there's an increasing percent of workers who are in the "stagnant wages" category. These ones are not contributing to the improved production due to new technology. Rather, many of them are being replaced by those changes.

Just because you can name some categories which are an exception to this trend does not negate the trend, and does not change the fact that the workers losing ground are ones becoming less competitive and less valuable, and that's the reason they are losing ground. Many of them are factory workers using modern technology which improves the production, but they are not the ones who created the new technology and are not entitled to the reward for the improved production, because they are just as replaceable as they ever were, and thus just as non-valuable, or even of LESS value, as their supply has only increased, whereas the need for them is DECREASING.

To be more valuable the need for you has to increase, and your replaceability has to decrease. That's a minority of today's workforce, most of which is going the opposite direction, i.e., toward being less needed and more replaceable.

Can you imagine what would happen to this place without moderators to enforce the rules? Without the sysadmin keeping the board running it would have broken down years ago.

RayJ, a worker, found us a far cheaper web hosting service a couple years ago that has saved the board tons of money. He had to do the work to set the board up on the server. A worker had to do the work to assign the space on the server to our board.

So now there you are, like capital without a worker manipulating it, just sitting there looking incredibly stupid.

Any such needed workers are paid more if the need for them is increasing and they are more difficult to replace, because of supply-and-demand and their skill which is more scarce. But where the workers needed to do the new technology are easy to find = in high supply and easy to replace, then they are not the ones creating the new value from the improved production. Replaceability is the simplest principle to explain who is more valuable and who is less valuable. It's basically the same as supply-and-demand.

Whatever may be wrong with today's economy -- and something's probably wrong with it -- it's not that wage-earners ("workers") are being underpaid as a class. Competition is at play causing some to rise and others (maybe a larger number) to decline in value and struggling harder to survive.

No workers are being cheated out of their "fair share" of the benefits they produced. This is determined totally by supply-and-demand, which sets the value at the lowest wage that is necessary in order to get the job done by someone.

So if there are dozens/hundreds of qualified job-seekers waiting in the wings to take certain jobs like these, and anyone quitting can easily be replaced, then their value is much lower than if there's no one waiting to take the job and those quitting cannot be replaced. So there's no reason for their compensation to be any higher than it is, or higher than the market supply-and-demand price.

You can't give any example where the real value is higher than whatever is needed to attract the needed workers and no more. The constant whining about underpaid workers comes mainly from the less competitive ones who are demanding pity and who cannot endure the shock when their self-worth dreams come up against the reality of the supply-and-demand trend in the global economy. When they turn to Crybaby Economics, or employer-bashing, they only make it worse for everyone -- like the Luddites made it worse 200 years ago (or would have made it worse if they had succeeded in getting their way).

Those seriously wanting to correct what's wrong with the economy should seek out the real causes instead of falling into the destructive scapegoating mentality -- i.e., the mentality of dividing everyone into two warring camps (employers vs wage-earners) and demanding punishment of the bad guy employers and reward to all the wage-earner victims who must be propped up not based on any merit but only their membership in this class (large in membership and thus a good source of cheap applause for demagogues and also easy to feel sorry for even though there are plenty other victims who are ignored and made worse off by our obsession on the "worker"/wage-earner class).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If workers are generating wealth for society, doing necessary work, they earn a share in the wealth they help to create. The situation is that workers are not getting their fair share (market value) of the wealth they help to produce....which flows rapidly upward to the big end of town.

You still haven't demonstrated what a fair share is.

 

[DBT]

If workers are generating wealth for society, doing necessary work, they earn a share in the wealth they help to create. The situation is that workers are not getting their fair share (market value) of the wealth they help to produce....which flows rapidly upward to the big end of town.

You still haven't demonstrated what a fair share is.

Yes I have. Graphs, stats and descriptions of the growing disparity in income and wealth between the top end of town and workers showing that the ratio was better just a few decades ago. Including a list of reasons why the situation is not beneficial for society, the economy or sustainable in the long term....

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

more Crybaby Economics

Worth?

Is a football player worth their five million per annum contract while a doctor or teacher is paid a fraction of that?

The vast majority of "football players" are less valuable than doctors and teachers and are paid less than these, not more. Some even work for free, even though they have skill/talent and provide some entertainment.

But for the top .000001% elite professionals who are in demand for mass media entertainment, the sky's the limit -- yes, their value is greater -- It's supply-and-demand which determines the worth. Their success is based on their performance and testing which forces them to prove they're better than the 99.999999% below them, and the profits they bring are the proof. And the spectators/fans themselves -- however much some of them grumble -- do recognize or experience the difference between the top elite vs. the mediocre and spend their dollars accordingly (in more ways than only attendance at the games).

A worker's worth, depending on the criteria, may be determined in many ways.

"determined" by whom? Economics can try to determine it, but also those who have to pay the workers can determine it. Ultimately it has to be those who pay for it who determine the worth. While the economists have to measure "worth" or value according to what the buyers are willing to pay. If you want something scarce badly enough you might be willing to pay a higher price for it than the economist or the scientist or philosopher thinks it's worth. Whose decision is it? Who is entitled to judge that it's worth this or that price? How can it be anyone other than the buyer who wants that thing they're paying for?

So the neutral observer looking in at the buyers and sellers, from the outside, trying to judge the decisions being made, has no way to measure the "value" or "worth" of the commodities other than according to the demand for them from the buyers, so that in virtually all cases you have to look at the actual prices being paid, in the market, by those making decisions freely, out of their interest in the product, trying to either produce or consume the commodity.


The private good (profit etc.) and public good are equally legitimate.

Your instinct that there is some HIGHER value than this private profit selfish value can be understood in terms of certain social values or public values which can be judged socially, but these social values do not negate the private values and cannot be used judgmentally to prove something wrong with the private values people want to spend their money on, no matter how rich someone is getting.

It's OK to say everyone high up in the top .001 elite must pay higher taxes or something, but it's NOT OK to dictate what someone's proper compensation level should be based on your presumed scientific neutral observation point from which you can pass judgment on every individual's choice to pay a certain price, or to accept a certain price for their service. You have no objective verifiable status which entitles you to overrule anyone's private choice to pay or receive any price, however high or low, not even if you're joined by hundreds or thousands of other self-styled experts pretending to have that authority and wanting to impose your doctrines onto those private decision-makers.

A universal across-the-board higher tax rate on the top .0001% (or .0000001 etc.), or other progressive taxation, can leave it to the private buyers and sellers how the values come about and how the wealth gets dispersed among the producers, and how each commodity gets priced, including labor -- while at the same time do what's practical to make sure that public needs get paid for, in higher proportion, by the wealthy elite.

This makes sure that the public need is met, but without dictating what each producer is worth, from the outside, trying to judge every transaction and every commodity produced, like many demagogues and tyrants have pretended to do, putting their subjective judgment onto everything of value, pretending there is some scientific way to measure every value.

The fact that "worth . . . may be determined in many ways" is precisely why we cannot set up an outside authority to fix the values and judge who is being paid too much or too little. It's subjective, not scientific, and cannot lead to anything but reduced performance and deterioration of the economy. The "many ways" for judging "worth" keep changing and vary from one philosopher-theorist to the next and can never serve the millions of producers trying to figure out how to improve their performance. There's only one objective standard, which is to satisfy the market supply-and-demand requirements, which happens automatically without anyone imposing their judgment onto anyone else -- as the following presumes to do:

The point is that workers employed in a range of sectors are not getting their fair share of the wealth they help to produce . . .

That's your personal religious instinct, based on your mystical cosmic insight into the nature of the "fair" vs. the "unfair" -- and you're entitled to your religion. But you're not entitled to impose your personal feelings onto everyone else.

The fact is that you have no way to produce the "fair" system you intuit except by imposing rules onto everyone which will end up reducing the overall living standard, as this is measurable. Your solutions necessarily force some of the production to be shut down, as you would drive up the production cost, and this necessarily leads to less production and higher prices to consumers, which you continually disregard. Your cosmic intuition that this lower production and higher cost is a righteous sacrifice for society to make is not scientific but only your personal feelings, to satisfy your mystical instincts, not to increase the general living standard, which necessarily goes down as you force the production to decrease and the prices to increase.

The "share" that individual workers and all other buyers and sellers are actually experiencing, is the best one -- if it's being left to the free market supply-and-demand -- for satisfying all the needs of the whole population. If you artificially drive up anyone's "share" because you feel sorry for them, you are only driving DOWN someone else's share who has to pay for it.

Just because you feel sorry for certain select victims you see on the Nightly News -- certain high-profile "workers" (sellers) who are not as competitive as they were 20 or 40 years ago -- does not mean they are being deprived of their "fair" share. The neutral objective law of supply-and-demand shows that in their case the value has decreased, or has remained stagnant, compared to some others. Unless you can disprove the law of supply-and-demand, we have to assume that this objective neutral standard overrules your personal subjective feelings about what is "fair" or what ought to be in your cosmic visions of the Absolute Good in a Righteous Universe.

. . . their fair share of the wealth they help to produce . . .

No, the fact that they are so expendable -- so replaceable, so easy to get rid of when they aren't needed anymore, so unnecessary for the continued production -- is the proof that they are less needed and less helpful in the production. Their "help" to producing that wealth has DEcreased, i.e., it has greatly decreased in value. Those ones being replaced by machines and cheap labor are not providing as much "help" as they once did and so are less in demand. It's the scientists and engineers, a much smaller elite class of specialists, who have helped to produce the greater wealth, not the particular workers you're seeing on the Nightly News who are making a fuss and getting all this attention. And if we just artificially drive up their wage level, above their current market value, it can only inflict damage onto millions of consumers, even billions, who will have to pay the price and suffer a reduced "share" in order to pander to these whining ones making the fuss and getting attention and pity from you and other spectators being shocked by their cries for special attention.

It's always easy to feel sorry for certain high-profile victims who get disproportionate attention, like in a drama or soap opera, where your attention is focused in on a few select characters, as if the whole world revolves around them and their special case, to the exclusion of any attention toward the billions of others who are suffering just as much or even more.

. . . that their wages have in fact fallen below market value.

You've shown, and we all know, that some wages have declined or stagnated, but nothing shows that they fell below market value. You're ignoring the fact that these wage-earners have in fact become MORE REPLACEABLE, less necessary for the production, more expendable -- you completely ignore this fact about them. If you ignore what "market value" means, i.e., that it means IRreplaceability, NON-expendable, etc., then of course you will falsely characterize it as "below market value" because you totally reject what "market value" really means as something immoral or repugnant to you personally, or something repulsive to your personal religious instincts. But your religion is false -- Nonreplaceability IS IMPORTANT in determining the value, the good, NOT unimportant as you want to make it. Just because you hate the fact that some producers are better than others, are MORE needed and MORE IN DEMAND, does not negate the fact that they are more valuable by producing more than those who are more replaceable and less needed.

That some are LESS NEEDED than others is something that hurts you, offends you, but your feelings don't negate the reality.

Their higher value is based on the only objective standard we have, not on your mystical instincts of what "fair" ought to be, or on feeling sorry for select victim groups you happen to notice to the exclusion of millions of others who would be (or are) victimized by your false demand to drive up the labor cost which would drive down the living standard of all.

Meanwhile the rich enjoy their own growing income and wealth.

There's "the rich" and then there's "the rich" -- some of them earned it and others are screwing someone. It's fine to separate them and try to plug the loopholes or make the system more honest so it rewards merit only. When will you start doing that, looking for ways to make it all more honest so it rewards merit only? instead of just resorting to Crybaby Economics, to employer-bashing and -scapegoating?

Is their worth to be measured in money and property? Their great talent for making money?

Yes, for all those who did it by being more productive. What's wrong with getting rich if they did it by being more productive and making consumers better off? You need to stop putting all the rich (and all employers) in the same category so you can simply bash them all as a class, like a demagogue pandering to the idiot masses, like the rioters destroying business property of small struggling entrepreneurs struggling to survive, trying to save on costs.

In some cases "making money" means reducing costs, including labor costs. By means of this cost savings some of them survived and then expanded and even got rich. Those who succeed at this, making the right decisions, are entitled to that "worth" or "value" they created, meaning they had more "worth" because of their "talent for making money" honestly to serve consumers better and succeed. You cannot lump all these honest ones into the same category as the ones who cheated the system and screwed others in order to get rich. As long as you continue to disregard this and just keep scapegoating and preaching hate toward an entire class, you are only adding to the ongoing declining value of the less competitive ones you're pandering to in your delusion that you're their hero on a White Horse coming to save them.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Crybaby Economics always gets the facts wrong.

Worth?

Is a football player worth their five million per annum contract while a doctor or teacher is paid a fraction of that?

A workers worth, depending on the criteria, may be determined in many ways.

The point is that workers employed in a range of sectors are not getting their fair share of the wealth they help to produce...that their wages have in fact fallen below market value. Meanwhile the rich enjoy their own growing income and wealth. Is their worth to be measured in money and property? Their great talent for making money?

A worker's worth is the value they produce. Yes, this is hard to measure when it's a team effort but that doesn't change the basic issue.

The left wants some nonsensical definition of worth based on standard of living--but standard of living doesn't produce output.

As for the football player--his worth is what people will pay to see him play minus the costs of doing so.

A worker's worth is measured by the wealth their labour generates.

But how much is each worker generating? Some generate much more than others. And today the traditional factory worker you're feeling pity for is generating far less. The fact that they are so easily replaceable by cheap labor and by machines is the obvious indicator that their contribution to generating the wealth has decreased.

Yet at the same time there are some highly-specialized workers, or professionals, who are being paid more in accordance with their greater contribution. If you cannot distinguish between the more competitive and less competitive workers, or the more replaceable and less replaceable, then any solution you come up with is only going to make everything worse, for everyone, including for the less competitive workers you're falling all over yourself to feel sorry for.

Workers are not getting their fair share of the wealth they generate....which is flowing rapidly to the high end of town.

You say this only because you refuse to recognize that REPLACEABILITY is the meaning of less valuable. The workers you're complaining for are precisely the ones LESS NEEDED than before, who are more expendable, who can be easily replaced, whereas the few who are necessary to produce the greater wealth are NOT so expendable or replaceable and so have greater value and are being paid their higher share of the wealth they are generating. The "high end of town" may be decreasing, as the number of those who are IRREPLACEABLE is decreasing.

Workers are exploited because there is a power imbalance between individual workers and the employer.

No, there has always been such a power imbalance. This cannot be the cause of any recent trend, such as the trend you're complaining about -- the declining or stagnating wages. Those same factory workers 100 years ago (same kind of labor) had greater value and experienced increasing wages, and yet there was the same power imbalance back then as there is today. Their wages kept up, did not stagnate, because their value was increasing, or the need for them was increasing, making them less replaceable than their counterparts today.

There's nothing wrong about the "power imbalance" -- we've always had it. All that matters is that the buyers and sellers (employers and workers) be free to choose whether to accept the terms without threat of violence from the other side trying to force them against their will.

Which is why unions were formed in the first place.

No, wrong again. The most downtrodden workers and most subject to the power imbalance never got unions. So that's not how unions were formed in the first place. The first unions were formed by workers who had greater power than other workers who had less power. So you cannot claim it was a "power imbalance" which led to forming the unions.

You see that you always misstate the facts when all you can do is obsess on feeling sorry for your high-profile victim group rather than just looking at the real world.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If workers are generating wealth for society, doing necessary work, they earn a share in the wealth they help to create. The situation is that workers are not getting their fair share (market value) of the wealth they help to produce....which flows rapidly upward to the big end of town.

You still haven't demonstrated what a fair share is.

Yes I have. Graphs, stats and descriptions of the growing disparity in income and wealth between the top end of town and workers showing that the ratio was better just a few decades ago. Including a list of reasons why the situation is not beneficial for society, the economy or sustainable in the long term....

Your data has consistent problems:

1) You're looking at hourly workers. Most good-paying jobs these days are not hourly.

2) Your data only shows the share going to workers, you're pretending the rest goes to owners, neglecting the share that goes to capital expenditures.

3) Even if you showed a change that says nothing about what is fair.

 

[DBT]

No, there has always been such a power imbalance. This cannot be the cause of any recent trend, such as the trend you're complaining about -- the declining or stagnating wages. Those same factory workers 100 years ago (same kind of labor) had greater value and experienced increasing wages, and yet there was the same power imbalance back then as there is today. Their wages kept up, did not stagnate, because their value was increasing, or the need for them was increasing, making them less replaceable than their counterparts today..

Of course there has always been a power imbalance. A job applicant for a typical job is not in a position to set wages or conditions, and never has been. The beginning of the industrial revolution saw the height of this imbalance, with atrocious pay and conditions for workers and the necessity for collective bargaining and union action. That is the point. It has nothing to do with being a 'crybaby' or any of your other dismissals of the problem of growing inequality. The issue has been explained enough times.

 

[DBT]

Yes I have. Graphs, stats and descriptions of the growing disparity in income and wealth between the top end of town and workers showing that the ratio was better just a few decades ago. Including a list of reasons why the situation is not beneficial for society, the economy or sustainable in the long term....

Your data has consistent problems:

1) You're looking at hourly workers. Most good-paying jobs these days are not hourly.

2) Your data only shows the share going to workers, you're pretending the rest goes to owners, neglecting the share that goes to capital expenditures.

3) Even if you showed a change that says nothing about what is fair.

No, no, no and no. Plus, despite several requests for evidence, stats, references, etc, you have yet to provide information that supports what you claim .

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

definition of "CRYBABY ECONOMICS" -- demanding more than your real value

Real VALUE is directly proportional to Replaceability.

Worth?

Is a football player worth their five million per annum contract while a doctor or teacher is paid a fraction of that?

A worker's worth, depending on the criteria, may be determined in many ways.

Nobody's wages ever fall below market value (assuming companies aren't doing anything illegal). If they did fall below market value it wouldn't be their market value.

We are not talking legalities. This is about market value. The figures provided show that workers are not getting a fair share of the wealth they generate. That the top end of town continues to grow they wealth is a symptom of this imbalance.

All you are saying is that you wish that workers market value was higher than it really is. I'm sorry, but it isn't. If you manipulate it, we'll get a bunch of weird following effects that may hurt the overall economy.

Again, given the figures (provided), workers are not getting paid their worth in terms of wealth generated. Not even close.

The "figures" don't show the workers' contribution, but only the total improved production. I.e., not the "wealth generated" by those particular workers, but what is produced by the whole company.

How do you measure the "wealth generated"? i.e., the part GENERATED by each particular worker? or a particular group of them?

The products coming out of that factory are produced mainly by the technology, and by the people who created the technology, not by the ones operating the machines. The ones who really GENERATE the wealth are those individuals without whom the wealth would not get created. Who are those individuals? These are particular persons, not a BROAD CLASS of workers, not 100 or 1000 factory workers at that company, but certain specialists, some high-level professionals and scientists and engineers, NOT THE FACTORY WORKERS OPERATING the technology who can easily be replaced, because they were NOT essential in producing the technology.

Their REPLACEABILITY is the measure of their contribution. How necessary were they to the production of that wealth? How indispensable were they individually? Could the production (technology etc.) have happened without them? Yes, it could easily have happened without those individual factory workers who were so easily replaceable -- and thus LESS valuable.

Those factory workers are no different than those 10 or 20 or 50 years earlier when each one "generated" a fraction of the same wealth. That factory worker did nothing to make the technology better, but simply operated the machines handed to him by the specialists and managers or other higher-ups who produced that technology. You cannot give credit to the common factory worker operating the machine, who is just pushing the buttons prescribed to him in the instructions and in his training.

So stop lying and saying that those common factory workers are the ones who "GENERATED" that wealth and deserve to be paid higher as their fair "share" of the new wealth being generated. They do not deserve that credit you are falsely attributing to them. This is why I'm calling it

"Crybaby Economics" --

yes, that's what it is. You're demanding that they be rewarded for something they did not do, when all they're doing is just following their instructions like their predecessors did 50 years ago who "generated" much less wealth but were just as valuable in the earlier production as these workers are today who are "generating" no more, except in the sense that they have been provided with better technology to operate.

So don't whine when I call it CRYBABY! That's what it is when you demand something more only because your babysitter has more to give you, but you did not create that MORE yourself, but rather your babysitter produced it, or is paying others -- the specialists or scientists or engineers -- to produce it so you can operate better technology than before and turn out more wealth using their technology.

A "crybaby" is someone whose contribution has NOT increased but who demands more at someone else's expense, and throwing a tantrum when they don't get it -- demanding that they're entitled to a share in benefits produced by someone else to whom they are attached and so they think they're entitled to anything that someone produced.

This crybaby-parasite was not needed in order to produce the increased benefit, because s/he could easily have been replaced by any of a million others (or 20 million) who could just as easily do that work, pushing those buttons, training to operate the technology, just as the earlier workers 50 years ago operated the more primitive technology.

And don't say "But the training today is so much more advanced . . ." -- no, on the contrary, the machines have become EASIER to operate than before. It's only the engineering and designing the machines which is more complicated. They've made the operations easier and safer, with fewer details to keep track of. What they use now has really eliminated many or most of the operators so that now not as many are needed, i.e., the DEMAND for operators has decreased = their VALUE has decreased. When you need LESS of something, that means the something has decreased in value, not increased.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Crybaby demands for equality and "balance" with others do not benefit production.

A balance of both is needed. Minimising pay for workers is not . . .

Everyone's "pay" should be minimized. Each "pay" is another cost which consumers must pay for = higher price = bad = not good for the economy.

The point is to minimize all costs, no matter what, not just labor cost. If there are other costs which also can be minimized, then minimize them as well.

It's obvious that some labor cost can be reduced because that labor can be more easily replaced, or is less needed than before and thus has become LESS VALUABLE.

Minimising pay for workers is not a balance of labour and capital.

There's no need to BALANCE anything. That's just more Crybaby Economics. To demand the same as someone else is what a whining crybaby does. What you're entitled to is the the value that you produced, not an equal share as someone else just because they're in the same company.

The more valuable labor does in fact get more balance with "capital" -- but most of the labor is decreasing in value rather than increasing. So there's no reason it should become more balanced with "capital."

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

the role of collective bargaining

A balance of both is needed. Minimising pay for workers is not a balance of labour and capital.

Again, Marxist fantasies. The market is like a force of nature. If the market doesn't work the way you'd like, tough luck. Capitalists will always pay workers as little as they can get away with. That's in order.

Messing with this rarely ends well. The system I prefer is flat taxes and just giving the poorest money automatically. It keeps all the incentives intact.

Nothing to do with Marxism.

Then why do you now proceed to eulogize unions? Don't you know that the modern labor union movement originated from Karl Marx, who founded the first union movement? and first preached essentially everything you're saying here now:

If workers join together in order to get a better deal they are capitalizing on their strength in numbers.
By doing so they balance (to some degree) the advantage that employers over individual workers. Unions secure better deals for workers. Proven without a shadow of doubt.

How unions help all workers

''Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current data on unions’ effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections.

Some of the conclusions are:

Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%.

Unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree.

Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries.

The impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages.

The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans.

Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers. They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24% more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer.

Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions.

Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays).

Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are thus an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections''

Unions have many times won benefits to their members, and some non-member workers. But in all cases they also drove up the cost of production and caused reduced production = higher prices to ALL consumers = to the whole nation.

Despite all the benefits you can list, none of this proves that there has been an overall net benefit to the whole nation as a result, because there is also the cost which someone has to bear.

The only way to prove a NET BENEFIT from unions is to show that they did something to IMPROVE THE PRODUCTION, or to improve the performance of the workers, or the whole company. Just showing that they succeeded in gaining certain concessions, benefits, from employers does not indicate a net benefit to the whole society, because the COST of these benefits has to be subtracted from the total in order to compute the total net gain or loss.

That you are unable to show any overall social benefit from unions, but can only show gains won by certain workers at the cost of the company's total production, suggests that they have been mainly a net loss to the companies and to the overall production, meaning higher cost of production and reduced production = overall net harm rather than benefit to society.

But you are right that unions have given expression to the Crybaby Economics demands of the less competitive workers, and so have given them an outlet for their rage against the employer class which they need to hate and scapegoat.