Port strike and automation

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody is saying they should not get paid. But they are already very well paid. They want ridiculous amount more (70% pay increase) and no automation in ports, and are using extortion, monopoly power of their union, and an unreasonably friendly White House to get their way.

First time I've heard collective bargaining referenced to as extortion.

That's bizarre -- that rhetoric is a fixture in debates about unions, and you've been in quite few of those. But hey, you've heard what you've heard. Have you ever heard employment for wages referred to as extortion? "Do what I say or else you're fired."? Calling that extortion is a fixture in debates about capitalism, and you've been in a few of those too.

The thinking behind this sort of rhetoric is identical. It's not reasoning-based; it's a pattern-matching thing. In some people, "If you don't do for me what I want, I won't do for you what you want." triggers the same neural network as "If you don't do for me what I want, I'll beat you up.".

I called it extortion because it is. Fundamentally, extortion is a threat to do harm if the target doesn't do the desired action. And that's what a strike is. It's about disrupting operation, not merely about not working.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If a widget manufacturer wants to raise his price from $10 to $20, he can -- they're his widgets and he can charge whatever he wants. But if all the widget manufacturers collude among themselves to all raise their prices to $20, the Sherman Act says they can go to prison for three years. Some widget company owner no doubt was offended by that law and argued "If manufacturers cannot withhold their widgets when they feel they aren't being paid enough it's price controls.". Do you agree with him?

Exactly. Unions are price controls by labor.

We correctly see it as very wrong when done by business. Even when done apparently inadvertently as we have seen with apartment rents--I do not believe the landlords realized it was price fixing, but the company that was providing the estimates pretty much has to have known and there should be some people in prison.

It's equally wrong when done by a monopoly of workers.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What is being counted that shouldn't be?

Don't know, you tell me. As far as i am concerned 100% of GDP is labor of some kind, always. Hence the article is BS.

A caveman eats a banana that fell off a wild banana plant. You're arguing that it was not the banana plant that produced the banana, but the caveman going to the effort of peeling it?

The labor is in finding it, not in peeling it.

 

[Swammerdami]

In my opinion, BOTH sides of this argument have merit.

What is often overlooked, I think, is the largish share taken by highly-paid labor rather than "capital."

"Taken"? That term would seem to imply that the wealth in question wasn't produced by the highly-paid labor.

Oh criminy! You seize on an arbitrary often-neutral verb and pretend that I am deliberately (and almost surreptitiously!) invoking some sort of morality. I should expect better from you.

Who produced it? How do you measure the contribution of each participant in a cooperative production procedure?

Income and wealth inequality are already major problems, and continues to rise.

(Source: nih.gov)

And here's that graph you post every time "GINI" hits the filter.

Just to return to the topic, is it your claim that income or wealth inequality is NOT a major source of emotional stress and social unrest in the U.S.? Rightly or wrongly, workers resent when they are replaced by robots owned by the boss.

The U.S. GINI is much higher than the GINI of all Western European countries: Is it your claim that this is meaningless because almost everyone (except you) uses a flawed definition of GINI?

 

[Swammerdami]

In my opinion, BOTH sides of this argument have merit.

What is often overlooked, I think, is the largish share taken by highly-paid labor rather than "capital."

"Taken"? That term would seem to imply that the wealth in question wasn't produced by the highly-paid labor.

Oh criminy! You seize on an arbitrary often-neutral verb and pretend that I am deliberately (and almost surreptitiously!) invoking some sort of morality. I should expect better from you.

Lest the point be unclear, I am NOT shy about using invective when I want to make a value judgement. I could have written "plundered by" if I wanted to deny that high earners earned. I devoted only a few milliseconds to this choice of words. Another neutral choice -- "given to" -- would allow the same objection. And "earned by" WOULD make a moral judgement as I now explain.

Some criminals are high earners. Do they "earn" their money? What do those who think the Magic Market achieves "perfect pricing" think of the high rewards earned by bank robbers and embezzlers? And if you claim that the Magic Market's Perfect Pricing does not apply to crime, where do you draw the line? Much of Microsoft's huge value was attained by practices illegal under antitrust laws. If statutes were reworded to change civil illegalities into criminal illegalities would that imply that Bill Gates' earnings suddenly became unearned?

One reason why the American economy appears so prosperous on paper, yet has a large number of homeless is the income plundered^* by Wall St. speculators for example, or taken by other sectors and roles that do not produce useful goods or services. (The many thousands of health insurance employees whose job is to DENY care are another example. Their salaries "contribute" to GDP but represent a burden unfelt in Europe.)

* -- See? I'm not afraid to deploy pejorative verbs to make a point. What then is this perverse need to scrutinize every preposition or overlooked comma for surreptitious meaning? And my choice of "contribute" just now was thoughtless, but when I DID reflect for several milliseconds I left it as is for whimsy.

 

[barbos]

The discussion went the usual way to blaming billionaires, completely ignoring the fact that these poor union "workers" are ridiculously overpaid.

 

[Gospel]

The discussion went the usual way to blaming billionaires, completely ignoring the fact that these poor union "workers" are ridiculously overpaid.

So? Billionaires are ridiculously overpaid.

 

[barbos]

The discussion went the usual way to blaming billionaires, completely ignoring the fact that these poor union "workers" are ridiculously overpaid.

So? Billionaires are ridiculously overpaid.

So? that's not the topic of discussion here.

 

[Swammerdami]

The discussion went the usual way to blaming billionaires, completely ignoring the fact that these poor union "workers" are ridiculously overpaid.

Wrong again, as I show by emphasizing my phrase that you evidently overlooked.

What is often overlooked, I think, is the largish share taken by highly-paid labor rather than "capital." Wall Street traders and fund managers are my go-to example of highly-paid labor, but lawyers, criminals, dentists (and perhaps dockworkers!) are among several other examples.

 

[barbos]

Wrong again,

No, you are not the only one posting here.

 

[Swammerdami]

Wrong again,

No, you are not the only one posting here.

Here; let me help:

... completely ignoring ...

 

[barbos]

Here; let me help:

Yes, most completely ignore the the topic of OP.

 

[ZiprHead]

GDP doesn't fully measure wealth. My concern is not productivity, it's wealth distribution. Productivity has risen greatly yet wages have stagnated for the lower and middle classes.

Lower class certainly has. That always happens as societies develop--the market values skills over warm bodies. The spread between high skill and low skill is much wider than it was in the past and thus low skill is farther from the average. And the answer is not to simply pay them more--the result of that approach is more unemployment.

Productivity and skill doesn't justify this.

View attachment 48107

And this.

View attachment 48108

How do you know it doesn't? How do you measure the productivity of the people whose income paid for their respective families' assets?

So someone is so productive they deserve a 14 million dollar income? How does that work?

 

[ZiprHead]

The thing is a strike isn't about withholding their labor.

Yes, it is. That's the complete and accurate definition of a strike.

No. Withholding your labor would be quitting and going to work for somebody else.

Unions are about denying any labor to a business. Monopoly power. It's wrong when done by business, it's wrong when done by labor.

Management has alway been free to hire scabs

There are cases where they are explicitly prohibited from doing so by law. And when a union controls a whole market where are you going to find them?

Where?

The case I'm thinking of is commercial passenger airlines. The safety rules do not permit a complete turnover of cockpit crews--I wouldn't be shocked if this was deliberately put in there to have the very effect it does. So you have the current reality that the very senior pilots get very good pay while the junior pilots in many cases don't get enough to be safe. Union pay scales are engineered to trap workers with a single company to deprive them of their most powerful weapon: their feet.

Trap???

Hyperbole much?

 

[ZiprHead]

As for your second--there's a huge flaw in that data. Once again, I point to Freakonomics. It is incredibly UNcommon for people to go from the bottom quintile (starting out in life) to the top quintile (at retirement.) They only addressed it by quintiles and your chart breaks at 90% rather than 80% so it is not directly comparable. However, note that 90th percentile is $1.6m which is a completely reasonable number for professionals at retirement.

FTFY.

Thirty-two percent of persistently poor children spend half of early adult life in poverty, while only 1% of never-poor children do.36 In addition, only 16% of persistently poor children are able to escape poverty between the ages of 25 and 30.37 Due to one or a number of factors, these individuals are unable to climb above the poverty line and must subsequently raise their own children in poverty.

That doesn't even include becoming millionaires.

You seem to mention Freakonomics quite often. Perhaps you can cite what it says concerning this.

Oops, forgot the link.

Intergenerational Poverty in the United States - Ballard Brief

Every consequence of growing up in poverty acts as another barrier for someone to rise above the poverty line.

ballardbrief.byu.edu

 

[ZiprHead]

One reason why the American economy appears so prosperous on paper, yet has a large number of homeless is the income plundered* by Wall St. speculators for example, or taken by other sectors and roles that do not produce useful goods or services. (The many thousands of health insurance employees whose job is to DENY care are another example. Their salaries "contribute" to GDP but represent a burden unfelt in Europe.)

This is true. Red Lobster will be going under soon because it was purchased by Vulture capitalists. They tried to bullshit us that is was because of their all-you-can-eat shrimp specials.

The few VCs will become rich and a lot of people will be out of work.

 

[ZiprHead]

The discussion went the usual way to blaming billionaires, completely ignoring the fact that these poor union "workers" are ridiculously overpaid.

So? Billionaires are ridiculously overpaid.

So? that's not the topic of discussion here.

Not your call to say what the topic of discussion is.

BTW How can you discuss someone's income without comparison to others? Otherwise you are just bitching.

 

[Bomb#20]

Productivity and skill doesn't justify this.

View attachment 48107

And this.

View attachment 48108

How do you know it doesn't? How do you measure the productivity of the people whose income paid for their respective families' assets?

So someone is so productive they deserve a 14 million dollar income? How does that work?

Didn't say they do -- you're the one making the moral claim; I'm just asking you to show your work. You posted a chart in support of your contention; doing that would have been superfluous if you were arguing productivity and skill don't justify any amount of family wealth. So I took you to be presuming that productivity and skill justify wealth, and I'm reasoning from your premise.

Assuming productivity and skill justify wealth, but not as much wealth as is shown in your chart, there are two issues to be resolved. (1) How much productivity and skill did the people who made those fortunes exercise? (2) What is the formula for calculating amount of justified wealth as a function of amount of productivity and skill? So I'm starting out by asking you about part 1: what do you think is the right way to measure productivity and skill? If we resolve that we can move on to part 2.

(Personally, I don't justify wealth based on productivity and skill; I justify it based on customers owning their own money and having the right as owners to give it to whoever they want, in exchange for whatever goods and services they happen to like better. Since customers wanted to give Jackson Pollock five million dollars for a bunch of paintings that look like a five-year-old did them, fine by me, that justifies him having five million dollars -- my opinion of his skill and productivity notwithstanding. One of those customers later sells his bird-paper for $140,000,000, fine by me too, even though stashing bird-paper in a closet for decades takes no skill and produces nothing. Willing buyer, willing seller. The guy won the art lottery. Correction: the "art" lottery. But we're discussing your theory of wealth justification, not mine.)

 

[laughing dog]

It is simply not possible for that labor's share of GDP in the US since the 1980s because of people are being replaced by automation because THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE WORKING.

What you are missing is that more is being done.

Some numbers for illustration only: We had 100 workers and machines equivalent of another 100. Now we have 150 and machines that are equivalent to 300. More workers, lower percent of productivity due to the workers.

I pointed out a fact that contradicts barbos’s written claim. Labor’s share of GDP did not decline because fewer people are working because there are more people working. Productivity is irrelevant to that reality based observation.

Your claim is akin to saying 2 + 2 = blue….

I corrected a premise about fact: the number of people working since the 1980s has not decreased but increased. Hence the hypothesized causation by barbos is false because it is based on a false premise.

 

[ZiprHead]

Productivity and skill doesn't justify this.

View attachment 48107

And this.

View attachment 48108

How do you know it doesn't? How do you measure the productivity of the people whose income paid for their respective families' assets?

So someone is so productive they deserve a 14 million dollar income? How does that work?

Didn't say they do -- you're the one making the moral claim; I'm just asking you to show your work. You posted a chart in support of your contention; doing that would have been superfluous if you were arguing productivity and skill don't justify any amount of family wealth. So I took you to be presuming that productivity and skill justify wealth, and I'm reasoning from your premise.

Assuming productivity and skill justify wealth, but not as much wealth as is shown in your chart, there are two issues to be resolved. (1) How much productivity and skill did the people who made those fortunes exercise? (2) What is the formula for calculating amount of justified wealth as a function of amount of productivity and skill? So I'm starting out by asking you about part 1: what do you think is the right way to measure productivity and skill? If we resolve that we can move on to part 2.

Productivity is measured the same way it's always been measured. By comparing inputs to outputs.

Skills are usually judged by others. In business usually employee evaluations and tests.

Were you expecting something differant?

(Personally, I don't justify wealth based on productivity and skill; I justify it based on customers owning their own money and having the right as owners to give it to whoever they want, in exchange for whatever goods and services they happen to like better. Since customers wanted to give Jackson Pollock five million dollars for a bunch of paintings that look like a five-year-old did them, fine by me, that justifies him having five million dollars -- my opinion of his skill and productivity notwithstanding. One of those customers later sells his bird-paper for $140,000,000, fine by me too, even though stashing bird-paper in a closet for decades takes no skill and produces nothing. Willing buyer, willing seller. The guy won the art lottery. Correction: the "art" lottery. But we're discussing your theory of wealth justification, not mine.)

I like how you termed it "art lottery" because it very much is like a lottery to become wealthy in the arts. That includes musicians and bands, btw. My nephew's band has been "on the cusp" for years now. The thing is that artists do not rely on the work of others to supply them their wealth as the CEO class do. Artists don't send lobbyists to Washington to get advantageous tax loopholes enacted. Artists don't fund think tanks to provide "data" to aid the lobbyists. Artists don't take subsidies from the government and then complain about government (Galaxy Brain).

I actually don't mind CEOs making huge amounts of money. But when they try to break labor unions, block increases in the minimum wage, and various other schemes that keep the lower classes from improving their lives then they can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.