Why is FAIR TRADE better than FREE TRADE?

[ZiprHead]

What do you do for a living, Lumpen? Sack up and spill.

 

[DrZoidberg]

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.

For a Libertarian you have a weak grasp of Adam Smith. This is so basic to free market theory. In the Wealth of Nations he explains that the first priority for any competitors is to not compeat. The market will push capitalists towards forming cartells. Salary cartells is just another kind of cartell. Employees is also an actor on a free market and have every reason to protect their interests. You are arguing that an actor on the free market just rolls over and takes it up the ass. Why? Why would they? No other actor on a free market is expected to behave this way. You are butchering the theories of your own team. It's not even Ayn Rand. What she was against was compulsory unionisation. Compulsory being the key word. The threat of unionised workers will keep capitalists from forming wage cartells which keeps workers from unionising. That threat is valuable and necessary for a free market to work as intended. If you don't understand that, you're not much of a conservative or libertarian.

This is what's so funny about these debates. Conservatives usually suck at Adam Smith, Libertarians have often misunderstood Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, and leftists are typically clueless about Karl Marx. Marx was for a free market. He thought capitalism was great. He understood the power of it and didn't want to do away with it. His theories in Das Kaptial and the Communist Manifesto was intended to expand and develop those systems. Not create a state dictated controlled market, what became the USSR.

Morons have taken these great thinkers ideas and boiled them down to simplistic idiotic tripe and try to pass it off as deep thinking.

 

[ZiprHead]

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.

This has already been disproven, in the very thread I believe.

The US recorded the highest GDPs on record in the early fifties, the height of the labor union movement.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

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 .

I've shown #1 before. The fact that it's hourly wages is normally omitted but if you track down the data that's what the original says.

As for #2--where's the amount going to capital in your data?

As for #3--to show what's "fair" you have to come up with a solid definition of "fair". In a situation like this I think that's impossible.

You keep demanding sources from me, but what I'm doing is showing your argument is invalid--that doesn't take sources.

 

[laughing dog]

As for #2--where's the amount going to capital in your data?

Capital is owned by owners. It is an asset of theirs. Your objection is economically ignorant.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The US recorded the highest GDPs on record in the early fifties, the height of the labor union movement.

This crap again?

The 50s were boom times because we were basically the sole industrial powerhouse in the world. Every other major industrial nation had their industry heavily smashed in WWII. (Canada wasn't, but they're so much smaller than the US that they didn't change the picture much.) Of course a monopoly has boom times, once it ceases to be a monopoly that goes away. Quit using the 50s as an example of a good economy!

 

[ZiprHead]

The US recorded the highest GDPs on record in the early fifties, the height of the labor union movement.

This crap again?

The 50s were boom times because we were basically the sole industrial powerhouse in the world. Every other major industrial nation had their industry heavily smashed in WWII. (Canada wasn't, but they're so much smaller than the US that they didn't change the picture much.) Of course a monopoly has boom times, once it ceases to be a monopoly that goes away. Quit using the 50s as an example of a good economy!

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports

 

[DBT]

The US recorded the highest GDPs on record in the early fifties, the height of the labor union movement.

This crap again?

The 50s were boom times because we were basically the sole industrial powerhouse in the world. Every other major industrial nation had their industry heavily smashed in WWII. (Canada wasn't, but they're so much smaller than the US that they didn't change the picture much.) Of course a monopoly has boom times, once it ceases to be a monopoly that goes away. Quit using the 50s as an example of a good economy!

What you fail to consider is that the fifties and following decades were good for workers in other nations, Australia, Britain, etc. Workers gained better pay and conditions....which have been eroding away in the last few decades, even in the face of productivity gains, profits and ever increasing wealth and power at the top end.

 

[DBT]

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.

Cost of production is just a part of doing business. The aim in most cases being to maximise profits by reducing costs, which often comes at the expense of workers. Workers do better under collective bargaining and wealth is still created.

The point, to repeat, being: workers are not getting their fair share of the wealth they help to produce.

They are not getting their market share because there is a power imbalance between the employer and the worker.

An imbalance that is somewhat modified through collective bargaining.

 

[Harry Bosch]

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:



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.

Cost of production is just a part of doing business. The aim in most cases being to maximise profits by reducing costs, which often comes at the expense of workers. Workers do better under collective bargaining and wealth is still created.

The point, to repeat, being: workers are not getting their fair share of the wealth they help to produce.

They are not getting their market share because there is a power imbalance between the employer and the worker.

An imbalance that is somewhat modified through collective bargaining.

The difference is more that workers are paid a salary (which is a cost); owners are generally paid a distribution of stock. In a growing economy, stocks will always appreciate faster than wages.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As for #2--where's the amount going to capital in your data?

Capital is owned by owners. It is an asset of theirs. Your objection is economically ignorant.

No, you're the one being ignorant. It doesn't matter that it's owned by owners, it's not available to spend.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The US recorded the highest GDPs on record in the early fifties, the height of the labor union movement.

This crap again?

The 50s were boom times because we were basically the sole industrial powerhouse in the world. Every other major industrial nation had their industry heavily smashed in WWII. (Canada wasn't, but they're so much smaller than the US that they didn't change the picture much.) Of course a monopoly has boom times, once it ceases to be a monopoly that goes away. Quit using the 50s as an example of a good economy!

View attachment 29971

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports

What's that got to do with my point?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The US recorded the highest GDPs on record in the early fifties, the height of the labor union movement.

This crap again?

The 50s were boom times because we were basically the sole industrial powerhouse in the world. Every other major industrial nation had their industry heavily smashed in WWII. (Canada wasn't, but they're so much smaller than the US that they didn't change the picture much.) Of course a monopoly has boom times, once it ceases to be a monopoly that goes away. Quit using the 50s as an example of a good economy!

What you fail to consider is that the fifties and following decades were good for workers in other nations, Australia, Britain, etc. Workers gained better pay and conditions....which have been eroding away in the last few decades, even in the face of productivity gains, profits and ever increasing wealth and power at the top end.

You're still ignoring the capital expenses.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Cost of production is just a part of doing business. The aim in most cases being to maximise profits by reducing costs, which often comes at the expense of workers. Workers do better under collective bargaining and wealth is still created.

Which doesn't mean you can just handwave it away.

The capital costs of business have been going up, it's inherent from our increasing standard of living.

 

[DBT]

What you fail to consider is that the fifties and following decades were good for workers in other nations, Australia, Britain, etc. Workers gained better pay and conditions....which have been eroding away in the last few decades, even in the face of productivity gains, profits and ever increasing wealth and power at the top end.

You're still ignoring the capital expenses.

No, I'm not. Capital expense is factored into the business model. A business is started with the expectation, based on market demand, running costs, etc, that the business will be profitable.

 

[DBT]

Cost of production is just a part of doing business. The aim in most cases being to maximise profits by reducing costs, which often comes at the expense of workers. Workers do better under collective bargaining and wealth is still created.

Which doesn't mean you can just handwave it away.

The capital costs of business have been going up, it's inherent from our increasing standard of living.

Everything has been going up except wages for the average worker. Which does not apply to the big end of town, where wealth has no apparent limits.

 

[ZiprHead]

View attachment 29971

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports

What's that got to do with my point?

The point is that exports were flat until the late seventies. Yet you want to give all the credit for the massive GDP numbers to exports.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

FREE MARKET!!! (but curtail the cartels)

It has to be a competitive free market, not just any free market.

I'm not against trade unions. I think unions are important and a necessary component to any healthy labour market. . . .

Unions could be a valuable part of the economy, by helping to make the workers more productive, improving their performance. Maybe sometimes they do serve this role, at least in some countries.

But unions are essentially cartels, and this has turned them rotten.

The legitimate positive function of unions can be compatible with the principle of competition. It must be recognized that competition is a necessary component of the market, and yet unions mostly disregard this, demanding protectionist measures and other policies which reduce competition, and demonizing foreign production as detrimental to the domestic economy, which it is not. Healthy unionism would be a kind which welcomes all competition, no matter where it comes from, and would make its gains by causing workers to perform their work better and compete better and beat the foreigners by outperforming them rather than by getting the demagogue President to crack down on the "unfair" imports.

trade unions are also a part of the market.

Even slavery was a part of the "market" 300 years ago. Not everything going on in the economy, or in the society, is a legitimate part of the system. Some elements within the society go contrary to a legitimate competitive free market system. Including some capitalists. How about a murder-for-hire business. That too is a "part of the market."

A free market isn't everybody lying down flat and letting the capitalists walk all over them.

No, it's everybody improving their performance so they can compete better. But it's not demanding laws which stomp down on a competitor who sells something at a lower price, like unions demanding anti-dumping laws against foreigners beating them on price, or imposing crybaby "local content" rules requiring products to be 35% or 50% domestic-made. These are crybabies not "lying down flat and letting the capitalists walk all over them," but rising up to crush the competition and make the economy worse and drive up the cost of living for the whole nation, in order to increase the benefit to a small special interest group.

So in a true free market some of the players must yield to the benefits of competition rather than rise up and go to war against their hated competitors and against all the consumers, waving their xenophobic pseudo-patriotic banners and screaming "jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs! jobs!" etc. They'd do the economy better by continuing to "lie flat" and let the country benefit from the free market competition.

A free market is everybody hustling to get a piece, even workers.

Only if they get their "piece" by competing and performing better, not if they get it by running to the government to pass laws to excuse them from competing. Not ALL "hustling to get a piece" is the "free market."

And "free" has its limit, because it has to be a COMPETITIVE free market, not just a free market where every player is "free" to choose anything no matter what. There can be legitimate interference in the market to force the players to be competitive rather than engage in anticompetitive behavior, e.g., price-fixing. Enforcing competition is a messy part of the free market, but it can be necessary, because serving consumers has to be the ultimate goal -- higher overall living standard -- not simply freedom of producers to do anything they choose. In cases where they choose anticompetitive acts, this is the one instance of "free" choice going against the good of the whole society. So cartels and monopolies and oligopolies have to be deterred somehow, even though this means "free" is curtailed.

This is the main point where Ayn Rand and most Libertarians went wrong.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Price-fixing and wage-fixing are bad for the economy, but not EXTORTION.

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 have over individual workers. Unions secure better deals for workers. Proven without a shadow of doubt.

If workers join together in order to commit extortion of course they benefit. If the state won't prosecute crime of course the criminals benefit!

It's not extortion. It's a balance of power.

It's a use of cartel power. The union is a cartel which gains some advantage not by competing but by anticompetitive behavior, uniting with their competitors to fix their price = wage-fixing.

You could also say that price-fixing by companies is not "extortion." It is just an anticompetitive act which makes everyone worse off except those players who gain by joining together to agree on terms rather than competing with each other.

As it stands, it is the employer who has the power to set wages and the employee who has no choice but to either accept or have no income. That is extortion.

No, there's no "extortion" until threats of force are used against the victim. The employer is not threatening you to offer you $1 and say you don't get the $1 unless you do that work. A "threat" to not pay you $1 is not really a "threat" because if such a "threat" is carried out, it leaves you no worse off. A real "threat" has to be something which if done would make you worse off than you already were.

Definition of "extortion" -- "the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats." https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf...hUKEwjc28Gn_NbsAhVOop4KHWIxATcQ4dUDCAc&uact=5

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What you fail to consider is that the fifties and following decades were good for workers in other nations, Australia, Britain, etc. Workers gained better pay and conditions....which have been eroding away in the last few decades, even in the face of productivity gains, profits and ever increasing wealth and power at the top end.

You're still ignoring the capital expenses.

No, I'm not. Capital expense is factored into the business model. A business is started with the expectation, based on market demand, running costs, etc, that the business will be profitable.

Which doesn't get rid of the expenses. And note that most capital expenses are from business growth, not business creation anyway.