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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (19543)	12/26/2004 10:09:16 PM
From: ThirdEye	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

Essentially what you are saying is that unions allow labor to demand compensation in excess of what a free market would afford them. It all in the semantics, I guess. Anyone who produces anything wants to charge whatever the market will bear and pay as little as they can get away with. So who defines what a "free market" can afford? Has the standard of living here risen to its current level despite the existence of organized labor or because of it? How did the top 20% of this country accumulate 40% of the purchasing power? How is it that real wages haven't risen much for a long time? How did the income gap between the top and the bottom of this economy get so large? How did we get to have 1 of 5 people not covered by health insurance? That wouldn't seem to be a testament to the inordinate power of labor, would it? Govt "interference" exists throughout the economy. The S&L bailout, the airlines, farm subsidies, tobacco, milk, what else. You seem to be bemoaning a reality of our economy that is not going to go away easily or, I suspect, completely. The minimum wage is not going away. I happen to work for a large HMO. I'm not in a union, but almost everyone I work with is. It happens to be a reality of this organization that puts it in a difficult position relative to their competitors. But lo and behold, national and international figures are beating a path to our door and just last Monday night, this HMO was touted on a major network evening news as a possible model for the rest of the nation. It's all in your point of view.