An answer to Radical Moderate on Unions - Granite Grok

An answer to Radical Moderate on Unions

Prager U - UnionsAs the sysadmin for GraniteGrok, that means I get (have ?) to review all the comments.  A relatively new commenter, Radical Moderate, has left a couple of serious questions for Steve on his post “The Public Unions vs. the Public — Prager University“.  I figured that even though Steve will have his own thoughts, they were certainly worth commenting on myself (e.g., GOOD questions!).  Don’t always get the chance to do so, but this is one of them:

Hi Steve,

This is where I take a different path from you guys at GG. Out of respect I will let you have at the unions unmolested. But I would just like to pose a couple of questions.

1. Prior to the massive influx of illegals and those that never put into the system taking out money we always had enough to pay for pensions of public workers. Why is the focus on public workers pensions and why have TPTB made only moves that take back public pensions and not the money illegals are sucking out of the system?

2. Is it possible that there has been an orchestrated global austerity movement and you are playing right into their hands by pushing the ‘blame the unions’ line?

My response:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment guarantees the Right to associate (“assemble”) for anyone with anyone.  If someone wants to band together to advocate better conditions for themselves, I don’t have a problem in general with that.  That said, the purpose of today’s unions is more about Power – the obtaining and wielding it.  Doubt me?  Watch the video.

At least in the Private Sector, there is the profit motive that should act as a governor on workplace demands.  “Should” is the operative word but we have seen unions that have decided that they just don’t represent the workers but really believe that they own the company.  A few years ago, a number of trucking companies went out of business when the demands of the Teamsters Union just went ridiculous and the owners shut the doors instead of allowing the tables to be turned such that they effectively would be working for the union.  Look at what the UAW did to the Big Three – without the Feds bailing them out, they would have died (and with Obama negotiating with them, the auto unions effectively own GM – talk about wealth redistribution).

But the pernicious moment was when unions were allowed into Government.  In the Public Sector space,  there is no limiting “profit motive” and we have seen the disastrous result of the collusion of Big Government / Statist / “Gotta keep my elected officialdom” politicians “splitting” the taxpayers money with the Unions in Detroit (yes, only a part for that implosion but think of this: Detroit is paying for far more retired union members than what there are active members – and far more than what the remaining taxpayers can afford).  We are also seeing the ill effects of that in California and in Rhode Island; Obama & Rahm’s Chicago and Illinois are next on the conveyor belt that feeds the Debt Maw.

Why else would they play such a large role in politics instead of concentrating solely on their relationships with the employers at which their members work.  Instead, and especially with the advent of Public Sector unions, they have become Government’s biggest Special Interest Group.  With Public Service Unions, we have seen evil things begin to happen with the collusion with Democrats come contract times – look at Detroit and look at California and the sad state they are in financially.  Their efforts can punish politicians that go against their selfish interests (e.g., look at the vilification of the TEA Party who only want smaller and more frugal Government – and the Public Sector unions have retaliated along with the Statist Politicians who need them for their own purposes).

But I digress:

1. Prior to the massive influx of illegals and those that never put into the system taking out money we always had enough to pay for pensions of public workers. Why is the focus on public workers pensions and why have TPTB made only moves that take back public pensions and not the money illegals are sucking out of the system?

It was, and always has been, a race between time, demographics, economy, technology, productivity and greed.  Take away, for the moment, the illegals and the looters.  Demographics alone is probably the major element – pensions are a Ponzi scheme and always will be.  The underlying notion is that were will always be enough people working to pluck a bit of change from WITHOUT THEM NOTICING ENOUGH TO COMPLAIN to pay for those who came before them – and that IS the most dangerous assumption: you’ll have more money later to pay the bigger bill.  Can you outrun the horde behind you?  The situation was LOTS of people in the private sector to pay for the relatively small number of lesser paid public workers.  Just like Social Security – 45 workers per retired person and that retiree didn’t last that long as the retirement age was actually higher than the live expectancy.

We can argue about ALL the perverse incentives, but my general premise is that with Governmental politicians now guaranteeing a retirement, large families were “crowded out” – why pay for large number of sons & daughters when Govt will just send a check and keep you stupid that this Govt check “allows you to be independent” even as the elderly parents became dependent on Govt (the first unhooking of America’s foundation of familial importance).  Which meant, lowered fertility, smaller children – and less folks to pay for the Boomers.

RM, there WERE sufficient numbers (demographics, money) in the beginning – but no longer.  Throw in an economy that still is tanked, a Public Sector that is far better compensated than the folks it is supposed to serve, productivity in the public sector (that could have been sufficient for the higher compensation) lagging, and the built in inefficiency of Govt have meant  Bad Things.    You know the drill – unions will whine and cry at every cut – like when a 5% increase was planned and then they only get 1% – THAT’S a cut in Governmentalese and for the rest of us, that’s a raise (even as OUR healthcare and other deductions wipe that out in a heartbeat).

2. Is it possible that there has been an orchestrated global austerity movement and you are playing right into their hands by pushing the ‘blame the unions’ line?

Possible, but not probably.  What has happened is that with the extremely lowered cost of technology, especially that in Communications and Computing, the rest of the world is catching up.  That “Golden Age” in the 50s and into the 60s, we were the best in world for manufacturing – mostly because most of Europe and Japan were still in ruins.  However, they put off “gratification for today” for that of tomorrow – and we went the other way.  Fat, Dumb, and Lazier – our standard of living went up and were no longer willing to accept less.  Intellectual capital became distributed around the world – and we were competing against much lower labor costs once lowered international shipping costs plummeted (thing cargo container ships).  Technology and productivity at work.

What we have been seeing is globalization – WHAT you do is no longer dependent on WHERE you are.  That intense competition was like a haymaker to us and there was a large dislocation in process – we suffered but a lot of other people improved their lot in life all over the world (and a lot of the stuff we can buy is a lot more inexpensive – our dollars go further).  But we’ve also coped and wrung a LOT of waste out of our systems as well – but that competition also showed the “creative destruction” inherent in capitalism.

Where are we now?  The human race has gone through a number of Ages before; Agrarian, Iron, Bronze, Steel, Industrial, Knowledge, and now Logistics.  We are also entering a RADICAL new version of Manufacturing with 3D Printing – will we go back to the cottage industry model as we may not need the old “everything in industrial building” if we can simply print what we want a la the Star Trek replicator?

No, this is “technology on steriods” which is really just an unleashing of not just America’s intellectual capital but now the world’s.

But we may be seeing that leveling out of Globalization – the initial “offshoring” recipients have seen THEIR costs rise as their workers wanted more (Singapore to China, China to the other Asian Tigers).  What is now happening is that such costs, along with the “management costs” with such lead times for manufacture and delivery from offshore are now swinging back to the US (IF Obama doesn’t totally screw up what should be a HUGE competitive advantage from fracking and shale formations – far cheap energy coming online).  Hey, I figured this out when call centers started to come back to the US.

So no, I don’t think that is a completely orchestrated event (although given the rise of transnationalism here in the US, and I am getting to the point that I’d believe that the Obama Administration is capable of anything in its race of Determined Weakness ™ – but look at the cracks now starting to widen in the EU that perhaps the transnational movement has some failures ahead).

 

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