We are all Slave now.

[Adder]

How long until 45 starts complimenting Sayoc?

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Not it isn't. You just call the multiplier "way lower" and that cinches it.

Thanks, Thurgreed, the idea that contractors and owners want to crush unions because they'll make more money is both highly relevant to what I was saying and also is something that never occurred to me. Brilliant.

No one should "take my word" for it because I have been very explicit that I don't know and am just working through an argument here. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything -- I am asking to be persuaded, something you so far are failing at.

I am surprised you think I am a proponent of trickle down. I am now a proponent of stimulating the economy by paying for remedial reading instructions for you.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Here's what I said: "I have had so many co-workers who email from their vacations. No one makes them do it." I actually do think I understand why they do it. They're not crazy, but they're not good at taking a break from their jobs. If you feel like being a jackass instead of having a conversation, stick to your almonds.

Okay, tough guy.

TM

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

Also, I suspect that the chilling effect on men who plaster their not-at-all-creepy vans with inflammatory political stickers will be minimal.

In some places they'd call that an "art car"

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

A friend of mine who owns a company here with the word "manufacturing" in it's descriptor just acquired a company in Ohio, and asked my spouse about what the workers there were like, culture-wise, and expectation. My husband (from Cleveland) described EXACTLY what you describe above (though he would have eliminated the music preferences). My friend was shocked at the differences of expectations of workers in the two locations.

Hey, I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I'm sure the music preferences have changed, and there are a lot fewer union workers and more people in slummy apartments, but I think the rest has been pretty constant.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

That's the ostensible rationale, but it's also about the gains to politicians from being about to hand out the work, which, as you say, comes with its own effective taxes.



My grandfather told me that the only two organizations that ever did anything for him in his life were the Democratic Party and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was an Elk, too, but that was different.

Another organization that's done a lot in my families progression from European peasants under foot to professionals wasting time on the internet is the Army. But Army, Union and Party are the big three.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It does more for the economy than having that army sitting idle and getting paid nothing.

I think the key thing that separated the US economy in the 20th Century from, say, the Venezuelan economy in the twentieth century is that our workers could afford to buy the cars they built.

Building an economy on transient, low-paid jobs really isn't effective stimulus. Ultimately, it is not just about how much money enters the economy at what velocity, but whether what you're building is a healthy and sustainable economy long term.

Just like giving money to rich people so they can jet around places is like sinking money into blow that gives you a high and then is gone.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

The very last thing I'd want is people to choose to call me, though. I take your point that they don't do it lightly, but still, I'm not encouraging that.

If my auto-reply says "I may take longer than normal to respond" they don't call me and I get to decide whether what they need is worth further interruption of my vacation and not them.

Btw: None of this is criticism. Do what works for you. I definitely know people who have a strict "I'm not checking emails" policy because they can't disengage if they don't. Good for them.

It works because no one wants to call someone on vacation, so it has to be pretty important.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

AON, that's one hell of a false flag operation.

eta: I'm a little concerned that the enemies of US Soccer have concocted this whole affair to bring the sport into disrepute in this country:

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Growing up around union workers, this stuff is just assumed for me, including having some sense (even if a 30 years out of date sense) of just how enormous the wage differentials are. My union relatives had decent homes in decent burbs with decent cars in front of them. They listened to the Talking Heads. The types I knew who were non-union doing the same thing lived in trailer parks or rundown apartments and listened to Black Sabbath.

I posted the truth here too many times to bother retyping. But union manufacturing workers buying foreign sweat shop made cars/electronics/etc. made it impossible to run a company making stuff and paying union wages. It was on the union guys to protect the union guys and they didn't.

As to construction union/non, certainly the union guys make more per hour, but everything the non-union guys make is spent too, isn't it? They buy a house or they buy a trailer but they both spend- so $100 in might buy more hours of non but it still comes back- I don't know that the strawman greedy owners take a higher percentage if they run a non-union company- you say they do but I don't know that, and I don't see how you would- so what you're saying is that, as a percentage of the $50 million in a project, materials take a bigger % if the labor is non, which is certainly true- but materials are paid for and made by workers, aren't they? I'm no econ guy, and I'm pro union (although also see them as sometimes quite flawed), but I don't see that Ty is that far off.

Here's a problem I almost had- I was in Chicago a month ago, checked into my Loop hotel (monaco of course) and took a walk along Mich Ave EVERY hotel on the avenue had a picket line out front. I'd gotten lucky- I wouldn't cross a line but what do you do when your hotel is on strike and you need a place to lay your head?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

JFC, this makes no sense at all. If the government pays wages to non-union workers, they have money to spend that they wouldn't otherwise.

When the government spends $100 million, that money goes somewhere. It doesn't just disappear. The argument all of you are making is that if you think of the different ways the money can be spent (low, non-union wages; higher, union wages; materials; land acquisition; equipment; salaries to managements; profit to capitalists), of all of them the one that ripples through the economy and has the most cumulative beneficial impact is the higher, union wages. Maybe that's so.

The basic intuition is that money that gets paid to the middle class gets spent again and circulates through the economy, but money that gets paid to the wealthy just gets put in a bank account (where it doesn't disappear, but gets reinvested by a bank with some positive impacts -- just not as much as with wages). I AGREE WITH THIS SO ALL OF YOU CAN STOP EXPLAINING TO ME AS IF I DISAGREE.

Maybe -- maybe -- it's true that middle-class wages are more effective stimulus than lower-class wages, but I doubt it, and if they are it's *not* because the lower-class spends 0. They spend everything they make.

I suspect that the biggest reason why union projects are more effective stimulus is that they are more expensive, and if you think that the government is going to spend whatever it takes to solve given problems instead of spending a certain amount on whatever projects are next in line, then you get more infrastructure spending with union jobs. I agree! I suspect government spending is more often driven by demand for specific projects, rather than Congress's assessment in the abstract of how much to spend in different categories. But that's not an answer to the question I started with, or the comment Sebby made that I reacted to.

The concept is quite simple. Every expenditure has some multiplier effect, that is true. But there are grades of those multipliers. And the non-union worker paid X has a shitty multiplier compared to the union worker paid X+.

Non-union workers are hired to pare labor costs as much as possible. This naturally leads to them being paid as little as management can pay them. This quality of worker tends to be a person living at the bottom of the economic ladder. Because he gets paid so little, a disproportionate amount of his income, if not all of it, goes to "contract rents." He's paying a slumlord, a high interest credit card, a high interest car loan, installments on delinquent medical debt (with debt collector vig on top of it). He's barely making it. Hence, I define his income as subsistence.*

The union guy receives more money. He does not fall into debt servitude. He has discretionary income which he uses to support the economy around him.

Technically, rents have a multiplier effect. Technically. Your friends on Wall Street will defend the harvesting of debt serfs via rents and one-sided contracts on the basis that these streams of revenue create capital for investment elsewhere. This is, as noted above, technically true. But it's trickle down. It does not deliver a multiplier nearly as large or nearly as quickly as simply paying workers union wages. I cannot provide specific numbers, but I would guess the multiplier effect of non-union labor versus union labor is something along the lines of 1:4.

(I think rents and the necessity of debt are the most pernicious and problematic issues in our economy. We've far too many mouths feeding off what in the old days would be called usurious or "odious" debts, and far too many licensing regimes at state and fed levels which act as barriers to entry for competitors [IP, professional credentialing, zoning, regs written by corporate lobbyists, legal codes with too much emphasis on protection of asset owners' rights above all others].)

________
* ETA: There is also an argument to be made that paying people subsistence wages actually imposes costs on the economy and saps growth. Many of these non-union workers are the sorts who wind up in ERs when they get sick as they cannot afford insurance. They eat badly, do not see doctors, and are responsible for significant bad debts on hospital books. They are compelled to apply for numerous govt programs just to survive, at cost of tax dollars (See: Wal Mart). They cannot support families, so they tend to leave children to be raised by single mothers, which puts the kids at greater risk of repeating the cycle. If they should get arrested, they're the people who find themselves unable to make bail, or pay their fines. Therefore, they're incarcerated more than others, at a cost of anywhere from $60-120 per day, depending on location.

The list of costs society incurs as a result of paying people like we live in Venezuela could go on for pages. If you wash this against the multiplier from paying these people pittances, I think the cost is probably 5X any perceived multiplier.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I think the key thing that separated the US economy in the 20th Century from, say, the Venezuelan economy in the twentieth century is that our workers could afford to buy the cars they built.

Building an economy on transient, low-paid jobs really isn't effective stimulus. Ultimately, it is not just about how much money enters the economy at what velocity, but whether what you're building is a healthy and sustainable economy long term.

Just like giving money to rich people so they can jet around places is like sinking money into blow that gives you a high and then is gone.

The economy is perverted. Dollars that should go to fixing our power grids, airports, highways, etc. are funneled into speculation and new subsistence wage "service industries." The top 20% of us have all the money, so the other 80% are being forced to work in gigs serving our consumption whims.

I've thrown a party or two in my life. I think it's fucking creepy to have staff running around handling things for a rather informal gathering. I think it's fucking creepy to have concierges to help you around Disneyworld because you paid paid extra. I don't want a fucking guy giving me a cold towel walking off a golf course. I don't even like them in the men's room in fancy hotels. I can get my own hand towel, thank you very much. Unless you've been asleep for the past decade, you've noticed there are a lot more people falling into what I'd called "quasi-servant" jobs. And not just for rich people. I'm seeing more and more of these McJobs servicing doctors, lawyers, brokers, etc. Maybe I'm an old crank. Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I don't like the idea of a fortiesh guy who'd clearly much rather be doing something else getting me a G&T at a party so he can afford to pay his rent. That strikes me as low rent Gatsby. (What's the difference between him and me? Luck, probably.) Fuck that. And fuck the spoiled people who think it's defensible. It's not. It's strange. And we're a twisted and silly country to embrace it.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It does more for the economy than having that army sitting idle and getting paid nothing.

No it doesn't. Welfare support for those people is cheaper than the costs incurred when they're running round like chickens with their heads cut off, trying desperately to cobble together enough dollars to pay the debt collectors and slumlords who extract all of their income. See Barbara Ehrenreich for the rest of this argument. https://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-.../dp/0312626681

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Charlie Baker is an ass.

You can make the argument that an economy is not a zero sum game until you're blue in the face, and you will get nowhere. The people who suck the greatest profits don't see the value in growing the pie. Each deal is bespoke, and each deal has to have as much profit wrung from it as possible. To ask someone to consider all deals in aggregate, and the broader long term impact of having all workers receive robust pay is pointless.

The situation we have in the country right now is a tragedy of the commons regarding workers/consumers. Holders of capital see no near term downside to abusing the labor market. When they finally do, I fear we're going to look something like Brazil.

It's really fucking stupid. These same people bitch endlessly about taxes, but still don't seem to understand that a strong middle class of well paid workers would shoulder a lot of that tax burden these capitalists are trying to avoid.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The economy is perverted. Dollars that should go to fixing our power grids, airports, highways, etc. are funneled into speculation and new subsistence wage "service industries." The top 20% of us have all the money, so the other 80% are being forced to work in gigs serving our consumption whims.

I've thrown a party or two in my life. I think it's fucking creepy to have staff running around handling things for a rather informal gathering. I think it's fucking creepy to have concierges to help you around Disneyworld because you paid paid extra. I don't want a fucking guy giving me a cold towel walking off a golf course. I don't even like them in the men's room in fancy hotels. I can get my own hand towel, thank you very much. Unless you've been asleep for the past decade, you've noticed there are a lot more people falling into what I'd called "quasi-servant" jobs. And not just for rich people. I'm seeing more and more of these McJobs servicing doctors, lawyers, brokers, etc. Maybe I'm an old crank. Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I don't like the idea of a fortiesh guy who'd clearly much rather be doing something else getting me a G&T at a party so he can afford to pay his rent. That strikes me as low rent Gatsby. (What's the difference between him and me? Luck, probably.) Fuck that. And fuck the spoiled people who think it's defensible. It's not. It's strange. And we're a twisted and silly country to embrace it.

One of our kids' friends' parents keep a party planner "on staff". They do throw great parties. For last year's Halloween, they repainted the entire downstairs of their house, emptied the furnishings, and turned the insides of the house into a pumpkin field with special effect ghouls. There were 6 foot spider webs with things stuck in them making noises i the corners.

Still, they made the kids pour their own punch.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I posted the truth here too many times to bother retyping. But union manufacturing workers buying foreign sweat shop made cars/electronics/etc. made it impossible to run a company making stuff and paying union wages. It was on the union guys to protect the union guys and they didn't.

As to construction union/non, certainly the union guys make more per hour, but everything the non-union guys make is spent too, isn't it? They buy a house or they buy a trailer but they both spend- so $100 in might buy more hours of non but it still comes back- I don't know that the strawman greedy owners take a higher percentage if they run a non-union company- you say they do but I don't know that, and I don't see how you would- so what you're saying is that, as a percentage of the $50 million in a project, materials take a bigger % if the labor is non, which is certainly true- but materials are paid for and made by workers, aren't they? I'm no econ guy, and I'm pro union (although also see them as sometimes quite flawed), but I don't see that Ty is that far off.

Here's a problem I almost had- I was in Chicago a month ago, checked into my Loop hotel (monaco of course) and took a walk along Mich Ave EVERY hotel on the avenue had a picket line out front. I'd gotten lucky- I wouldn't cross a line but what do you do when your hotel is on strike and you need a place to lay your head?

I'd drive home that it wasn't just union supporting union domestically. Had unions focused more on building international unions instead of protecting the national market, everyone would be better off today.