Matt, one of the things I felt would be vital this decade was unions.
Unions pushing for higher wages float the entire market as people who do not get rises migrate to those that do. Unions generally being labour intensive work which is exactly where our greatest strains are currently felt.
Many middle class paying jobs that are white collar high stress will begin to look pointless when you can have fixed hours, low stress, low skilled manual job paying the same or close to it.
When people ask the question ‘where are all these workers going to come from?’, they’ll come from white collar because the salaries aren’t worth the stress and hours.
Thoughts?
Regarding unions, the complete lack of action by unions on behalf of vaccine mandates really disappointed me. They had a good opportunity to stand up to government overreach and support the actual rights of their workers, and failed miserably. That was very disappointing to me.
My other issue with unions is that they are almost all in the government sector now. Something like 87% of unionized workers in Canada work for the government. This is completely inconsistent with the philosophy that unions are premised on: unions were SUPPOSED to be enforced by governments to protect workers from their private bourgeoisie exploitative bosses.
Now the government is protecting workers from...the government?
That's utterly redundant.
But unions started figuring out that corporations and other private businesses will just outsource their labour needs to China to skirt the burdensome wage requirements. Union bosses, who are mainly leftists, don't grasp how economics work - when something costs more, people buy LESS of it.
Labour is no exception - and union bosses and unionized workers are no exceptions. They moan about capitalist exploitation, when their home is FILLED with electronics and other goods made in China or elsewhere, where workers are paid near slave wages. This fact alone proves why unions don't work - nobody tolerates higher prices. Giant corporations are no exception. And increased costs always get passed down to consumers. And we are ALL consumers.
That's why economists focus on consumers rather than workers - both unions, and increases in minimum wage, make everything cost more.
While unions help their members, they also make everything cost more. So while I understand that unions originally emerged as a way to push back against the exploitative potential of the free market - I believe that today, they have become a net negative force in the economy, rather than a net positive.
Discuss.
