We are all Slave now.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Union wages have a uniquely high multiplier effect because union workers tend to consume in more sectors than non-union workers. Non-union workers are paid as little as management can pay them. Right there, a significant amount of purchasing power is eliminated. Non-union workers typically do not have benefits. They are more likely to have health care costs, interest on payday loans, and all other variety of debts that dog people living on the margin. These people do not have safety nets and acquire debt to survive in payoff periods. In short, non-union fungible construction labor tends to have very little discretionary income.

Union labor, otoh, gets paid more, has safety nets for periods of layoff or disability, and consequently tends not be in debt servitude. Union members can go to lunch and dinner at local establishments, drink at local bars, buy at local grocers, etc. They grow the local economy.

So the delta you're citing (union wage - non-union wage) is an incomplete assessment of the difference between union and non-union labor. It's not a question of one guy being able to spend $50 on dinner after work versus another being able to spend only $25. It's one guy being able to spend $25 versus another guy being able to spend $0. It's multiplier (union) vs. no multiplier (non-union).

Growing up around union workers, this stuff is just assumed for me, including having some sense (even if a 30 years out of date sense) of just how enormous the wage differentials are.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.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Or you can be smart, pay prevailing wage and get the unions on board as supporters.

YMMV based on location, but in the mid-atlantic, it's wiser to make an ally of the unions and mine the profit conceded through union wages from other efficiencies.

Charlie Baker is an ass.

[Adder]

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.

In my experience, it's the "I won't check emails while I'm out" group that has a hard time taking a break from their job, which is why the need the hard and fast rule. Others are capable of low-level monitoring and distributing without it being a major source of stress.

Personally, I'm going to be looking at my phone for stuff anyway, so it's a pretty small thing to monitor email too.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You want people earning enough to have discretionary income to throw around. An army of people paid subsistence wages does nothing for the economy.

From a purely stimulative point of view, I'm not sure it makes any difference whether a dollar gets spent on food or a Canyonero. Of course, if no dollars get spent on Canyoneros, you don't get a Canyonero industry maybe you want one. for reasons beyond stimulus. On the other hand, the nature of discretionary income is that there's discretion, which means that person can also choose to save.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's one guy being able to spend $25 versus another guy being able to spend $0.

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.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

The privatization is pushed as saving money because the private contractors won't be subject to the same "government red tape" (e.g., unions and civil service rules).

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.

It's pretty simple. My uncles were union carpenters and iron workers, and back in the day when someone got hired for a union job fresh off their training (a journeyman), at a point when they knew what they were doing but had modest work experience, they'd get $30-$40 an hour in NYC when the minimum wage was close to $5. The nonunion guys would get hired knowing squat at $10 an hour and move up with on-the-job training. But for someone experienced, comparing a $50 union wage and a $20 non-union one was pretty common. And the non-union work sites were also overrun by minimum wage workers (and sometimes sub-minimum wage illegal workers) who especially could do things done by carpenters on union sites. Never as well, of course, but they could do them.

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.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

An army of people paid subsistence wages does nothing for the economy.

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

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Here's a current wage card from a NJ Ironworkers union: http://cms.impactunions.org/Iron-Wor...2018%20(1).pdf - wages over $50, total package is north of $80 per hour, including benefits

Here's payscale's survey of Ironworker comp (national avg. of $22 an hour)
https://www.payscale.com/research/US...er/Hourly_Rate

Think of how many low paid workers you need to have to offset the $50+ per hour union wages and come to that average.

A real apples-to-apples comparison would show a smaller delta than you get comparing wages in NJ to national wages. Unions are stronger in places with higher wages and higher costs of living. But, point taken.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

In my experience, it's the "I won't check emails while I'm out" group that has a hard time taking a break from their job, which is why the need the hard and fast rule. Others are capable of low-level monitoring and distributing without it being a major source of stress.

Personally, I'm going to be looking at my phone for stuff anyway, so it's a pretty small thing to monitor email too.

I look at email too. If your auto-reply says, "I am on vacation and am not checking emails -- call me if you need me," that doesn't keep you from checking. But I try very hard not to respond, and usually I succeed. Once you respond, people think you are on email or miss that you are on vacation and just keep emailing you, and then it's even harder not to respond.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

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.

Right. If you want to spend a government dollar and ensure that it gets spent on current consumption and not saved, give it to the poorest first.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I look at email too. If your auto-reply says, "I am on vacation and am not checking emails -- call me if you need me," that doesn't keep you from checking.

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.

[Replaced_Texan]

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.

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.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Adder

In my experience, it's the "I won't check emails while I'm out" group that has a hard time taking a break from their job, which is why the need the hard and fast rule. Others are capable of low-level monitoring and distributing without it being a major source of stress.

Personally, I'm going to be looking at my phone for stuff anyway, so it's a pretty small thing to monitor email too.

I can't really handle the unopened email notification, so I check. I may not respond, but I generally take a look at it.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

I can't really handle the unopened email notification, so I check. I may not respond, but I generally take a look at it.

Me too. I am perpetually at zero unread emails. Which does not mean I've read them all closely. But I can't have a number there.

[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.