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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

Please let me know if you'd like your link added

[Anyone who has any ammo I can fire back, I'd be most appreciative, particularly in helping me discredit her notion that somehow unions help keep jobs in the USA, and evil corporations like WalMart are destroying the country.]

OK, so I'm at DeVry on the GI Bill trying to get a BS.  My professor seems to be some sort of avowed communist/socialist and has been forcing a pro-union, anti free market agenda on us since day 1.  

Anyone who has any ammo I can fire back, I'd be most appreciative, particularly in helping me discredit her notion that somehow unions help keep jobs in the USA, and evil corporations like WalMart are destroying the country.
help neocon fight the pink prof

[Edmund Burke]

The conservative cyber-cavalry to the rescue!

Your "professor" is a nitwit, and you can easily demonstrate this.  

1)  Civilian employment has been increasing (follow the link).  In 1960 there were about 66 million Americans employed, or about 56% of the population age 16 and above.  By 2002, there were about 136 million employed Americans, or about 63% of the adult population.  So, since employment has been increasing in absolute and relative terms, then jobs must have been GROWING.  If your "professor's" logic is accurate, then we would have to assume that unionization has also increased (given that unions preserve jobs, and therefore the loss of union jobs means a loss of jobs period).

http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-29.pdf

2)  Unfortunately for your teacher's logic, union employment as a percentage of all employment has dropped like a rock since the late 1950s.  See the graph below.  As an economist would say, the secular trend in employment and unionization suggests a NEGATIVE relationship -- declining union employment BOOSTS overall employment, which is logical (i.e., unions boost employer costs, which encourages them to locate in lower cost areas...overseas, for instance).

3)  After you beat her thoroughly over the head and shoulders with these facts, she'll shift (like a good Leftist) to the argument that, while the number of jobs may have increased, they aren't as good in terms of wages.  Moreover, we have lost manufacturing jobs.  How to counter such shifting?

a-  Disposable personal income per capita has nearly tripled since 1960 (see website below).  If union jobs are being replaced by crappy low-paid jobs, why the enormous increase in personal income?

http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-33.pdf

b-  Manufacturing employment has NOT followed union decline, but instead has fluctuated over the years.  Current losses are due to a variety of economic trends that don't have a lot to do with unionization.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/50xx/doc5078/02...gEmployment.pdf

c-  Rises in income inequality since the late 1970s are due to such things are family breakup, aging, and immigration.  See the letter here.

d- Average wages have fluctuated as well, but this is mostly due to the enormous rise in costs associated with employer-provided benefits (e.g., health insurance).  Don't let her pull the old "wages are eroding" nonsense.

http://www.epf.org/pubs/factsheets/2005/fs20050331.pdf

I'm sure AdamSmith will have more to say if he's around.  Good luck slamming your "professor."

unions help keep jobs in the USA

No, no, no, no, my friend.
Why would unions give a crap about keeping jobs in the USA? The unions want to go international, haven't you heard? The unions aren't in it for America, the unions are in for the unions. Just check into some of their global efforts of late. Since corporations are going international, so are the unions: chasing the producers and the dollars into the far reaches of the world.

I always said that once the unions have chased away every producer and manufacturer in the United States, they will go abroad. It's already happening.

Unions... Feh!

 

That find professor should explain why when Buckeye Steel closed the UNION workers had to wait 2 months plus to receive their final checks? I would have thought that since the UNION had so much pull with the company it would have been no problem receiving their last pay checks.

Being a former Buckeye Steel slave I can tell you the younger membership gave up their paid holidays for hourly pay raises. The per shift quotas were set by that shift's foreman which not even the union steward on that shift couldn't lower if he wanted to. The membership sold out their retirement plans as well to receive a SMALL cash bonus after the new contract had been ratified by the local.

The local's elected officers at state and national levels also plunder retirement accounts of their members to finance anything from a car purchase to a party. When Rockwell International was still in operation at the airport the local's members would frequent a Whitehall bar on payday to celebrate with lines of coke. That lasted till one of the councilmember's underaged kids was caught in the bar during a vice raid.

The intitial idea of unions was to promote safe and fair working conditions with good benefits. They have managed to screw many people out of millions of dollars while providing nothing in return to their members. I will agree that for firefighters and police officers unions are a great idea unfortunately the other unions have only greated many problems that make them a unattractive option and to the point that company's like Wal Mart do not want the drama that comes with having them.

While I cannot come up with the facts and figures like Dain has I can provide you with more situations of applied issues dealing with unions.

Yes, while Dain's figures kick some statistical a$$, stories close to home help too.

Like my stepdad, who has paid into a union for 25 years. Unfortunately, Techniglass shut down anyway, and the union was nowhere to be found .... want to know who bailed them out, paying for occupational retraining?

We did. You and me, Average Joe Nonunionmember Taxpayer. Luckily (for the Techniglass people anyway), we weren't unionized, and were still employed.

I have professors who like to shove that BS at me too. Like the one who tried to tell me that Bush is personally responsible for lowering gas prices ... after I lectured him for 30 minutes on what the freaking words FREE MARKET mean, he reconsidered his position.    

"Anyone who has any ammo I can fire back, I'd be most appreciative, particularly in helping me discredit her notion that somehow unions help keep jobs in the USA, and evil corporations like WalMart are destroying the country"

1. If collective bargoning is good for labor why isn't it good for businesses?
2. Read the Wagner, Sherman, and Clayton Act. They clearly make union activities illegal, and actually have to provide an exemption for unions. How can a principle that is wrong for owners be right for loborors?
3. The foundation of Communism are Unions. Enough said.
4. How can restraint of labor supply be beneficial for society as a whole? Unions are only enjoyed by the members, and not those who are locked out of work by their actions. Unions restrict the supply of labor, by definition, they are puting some people out of work.
5. Show me an area with high unemployment and industry in decline and I will show you a past of present union presence.
6. Unions don't follow free-market principles. They restrain supply, and drive the cost of labor up. That favors the union member (in the short run) but harms 100% of consumers and employers.
7. You shouldn't you have the right to work for a company and not join a union? Unions are the only organizatons in America that even if you disagree with them, you can be forced to join. As a kid I wouldn't work at Krogers becasue I had to join the union. Why should a private organization be able to stop me from holding a job unless I joined them. How does that work with individual freedom?
8. Almost every union industry has declined or left the US. Unions create inefficiencies that the free market exploits to put union firms at a disadvantage.
9. Public schools and Government jobs are largely union. Enough said.
10. Unions increase the cost of labor and decrease productivity. That is a double whammy against union firms. Unions commit financial suicide and send the bill to the firm that will surely fail.
11. Unions are anti individual, anti freedom, anti capitalism. Enough said.
12. Anti-Trust laws had to be ammended so they wouldn't be applied to unions. Go figure. Do as I say not as I do leftist politics. The laws don't aply to unions.

Quick, I need a counter-argument to "The debt and defecit are at record highs and this means the end times are coming"


btw, thanks for the link about real wages not going down, you called her bluff perfectly, and I had the round pre-loaded in the chamber, and it was deer in the headlights.

[Edmund Burke]

Eh, so easy.

1)  The deficit fluctuates...it's not all that high by historical standards.  Look at an older thread here.

2)  Federal debt today is slightly LOWER than it was in the mid-1990s.  If you want the skinny, follow the link below and look for Table 7.1 -- it gives historical gross federal debt over GDP.  Much higher during WWII and at some other times in history.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy200...05/pdf/hist.pdf

3)  The graph below just looks at recent history in debt/GDP.  Your "professor" is, again, a nitwit.  Ask her if she bought her Ph.D. at Walmart  :lol:   My bet is she doesn't have a Ph.D.

 

Ok Iceman, I'm totally defensive here, a bleeding heart guy who claims to have lost a textile job because of wal mart is siding with Professor Pinko and is insisting the defecit is an immediate problem, and is citing a labyrinthine connection with business and consumers with the government....

"According to http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/, our national debt increases on average two billion dollars per day. Social Security and Medicare will be going broke soon. These are major problems that need immediate attention. The money the government spends comes from the consumers and businesses of our country. The more money the government spends the less money consumers have to spend on products and the less money businesses have to reinvest into their companies’. To relieve this problem, our government will have to make some smart moves and the citizen of this country are going to have to make wise investments to get through this."


?
 

[Edmund Burke]

I don't think I understand your post.  You aren't going to win emotional battles...you can only win on facts.  The world is full of problems as well as stupid "solutions" to those problems.  

And who are you calling "iceman?"

no problem.  Its just easier to get motivated about the class when there is some kind of competition involved.  This stuff would be intensely boring to sift through without some kind of added edge, and me trying to advance an agenda just makes it easier to dive into these dull charts and readings.  Most of the folks in the class are agreeing with me so far, so I think I'm on the right track.  

It looks like the war is over for now, as it will be a new week tommorow and a new topic.  

can you PLEASE explain what you mean by "iceman"?

Certainly.  In 1986, a movie about naval aviation, "Top Gun" was a huge hit here.  It recently was re-released as a 2 disc dvd which I was just watching.  There is a scene were an American pilot (Val Kilmer), who goes by "Iceman" says "I'm totally defensive here" while he is engaged with about four aircraft.  The scene happened to be playing on my Mac when I was writing my post and I couldn't resist the silliness of it.  


no other significance than that.

[Edmund Burke]

Sorry to bore you with graphs and sh..  Didn't realize your conflict was about adrenaline rather than intellect.  Mea culpa.

Here's an alternative idea.  Just say "Unions suck, man."  A sure winner.  If all else fails, just say, "Oh yeah?"