I'm using the wrong standard? We pay a great deal of money so that the Unions can be paid by teachers.
We pay more to educate our children than any other nation on the planet (with the exception of Sweden, with which we are tied).
Our rankings are:
14th - Reading
25th - Math
22nd - Science
And they continue to slip.
So, we spend the most of any country in the world, per child, on our education, and our rankings are continually slipping.
Somethings wrong. You can no longer claim that we aren't spending enough on education, because we are... so why are our children not being educated like they should be?
I don't know, but it's not relevant: I didn't say we weren't spending enough on education. What I said is that when the top 1% control control 50% of our nation's wealth, going after public employee salaries is simply being a lapdog for corporate looters.
So, what you are trying to claim is that OSHA, and the various labor boards don't really do anything, it's the Unions and only the unions that ensure workplace standards, and there are no workplace standards where there are no unions.
In reality, the workplace safety standards at a union shop are the same as at a non-union shop.
You are being lied to.
Um, no, I've simply bothered to read and digest some history. No, the unions are not responsible for maintaining these agencies today. I never said they were. But you can be DAMN sure unions are responsible for many workplace safety regulations that we now take for granted., that were fought tooth and nail by employers. The unions won the concessions in the first place, and over time, these things "solidified" in the public consciousness--they came to be expected. You see, after something like workplace regulation is instituted, it is a new thing, and people are not accustomed to having it. There is thus a window of time in which corporate interests may be successful in repealing it, but if they cannot manage it within this window (and who knows how long it is--a few years, a decade, it depends), then the population comes to expect it, and will not tolerate encroachment on it.
Such as social security--had it been repealed shortly after it was passed, people would never have gotten used to it, and they wouldn't complain today about not having social security, because there would be no such thing. But try to touch social security today, and watch the reaction you get. It is well-known how politically dangerous it is to propose cuts to social security. That is why the Republicans, many of whom want
badly to do away with it altogether, will never ever admit it in public.
Greed of the corporations? I read an article where the CEO of Intel detailed WHY they built a manufacturing plant overseas. He said decisively, building the plant here would have cost us $1 Billion more than building it there.
I don't know about you, but I don't know too many companies that can afford to just throw away a Billion dollars. I guess that's greed.
And think about this.. that additional cost, is before the added operational cost. That's just the added cost to build the plant.
I don't pretend to know anything building regulations and so forth, but yes, that is exactly why they open up shop overseas--the decent American standard of living is expensive compared to countries with little regulation and low wages. Those safety regulations and benefits that we like are expensive. They cut into profits. This is a contradiction in the market economy that has always been there, but is becoming more pronounced in recent years. The interests of business become further and further removed from the interests of public welfare.
Your fallacy is calling those who run corporations "thieves". Companies and their employees have a symbiotic relationship. Companies need their employees. Employees need their employers. In a true open market, companies will work to keep their employees (mostly). Employees should work to keep their employer profitable.
No, it is not a fallacy, but it may seem like one if you don't know much about history. This tripe you're giving me about a "symbiotic relationship" exists only in high school econ 101. It is not real. The very existence of unions is enough to demonstrate the antagonistic relationship between capital and labor.
We used to have a more-or-less open market, back in the 19th century. Do you know what happened? Child labor. 16 hour days. Pay deductions for being the slightest bit late. Payment not in money, but only in store credit that had to be used at company stores. Wages were frequently paid only once or twice per year, and employers would frequently declare bankruptcy right before wages were due, and skip off having gotten 6 months of labor for free.
This is how the "free market" really worked. Ron Paul's fantasies are exactly that. They bear no resemblance to conditions as they actually existed.
There are cases where a union is needed because an employer doesn't value it's employees enough, but those cases are rare today.
Seeing as how wages haven't increased on average in 30 years, while productivity has soared, I'd say unions are needed now more than they have been in 80 years.
Ok, I'm gonna call BS. Link please.
Unions ARE NOT the people.
Unions are teachers, firefighters, police officers. You think these people are some elite class taking advantage of you? Then no link in the world will convince you otherwise.
You have. You have ignored the harm they have caused. They did great things during the first half of the last century, but has done a great deal of harm in the last half of the last century.
You're asking me for links to prove trivial things, while I'm supposed to let a whopper like this stand on its own? No. YOU provide links. Without unions, Americans have been working more and been paid less. Americans have gone deeper and deeper into debt, and inequality has soared.
I think YOU are the one who needs to prove their statements. I don't accept conservative propaganda.
Conservatives refuse to understand? That's a rather broad generalization, don't you think.
Sure. It's accurate, though. One thing that unites most conservative groups is their religious belief in the free market. Am I wrong? And almost every single one of their cherished beliefs has been shown to be utterly false. So yes, conservatives refuse to understand economics.
What you seem to fail to understand is that companies don't like to have huge reserves of money that isn't making them money. If they have extra money that they don't have a foreseeable need for, then they will find a way to spend that money in order to make more money. That's the simple fact of "corporate greed".
Um, I'm not sure what your point is here. I never disputed this. In fact, it feeds right into my argument about the fleecing of the American worker--their work has gone into the pockets of millionaires, who still seek more. And your answer is to give them more power. *sigh*
