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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (116476)	7/24/2009 6:48:23 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542193

Your issues involving unions only impact a small percentage of US companies and workers - compared to the whole labor force, they hardly impact much. Have you seen any actual cases of higher bond yields for unionized companies compared to non-union in the last few months, real examples? In 2008, union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage and salary workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (116476)	7/24/2009 8:43:53 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542193

Response: I believe I said increasing uncertainty. My specific reference is to Card Check or the current Son of Card Check. The presence of unions is not only a long term presence in the American economy, it's been, long term, quite beneficial. One of the benefits is to provide better healed consumer for that economy than would otherwise be the case. And makes your business friends more money. The quote from Henry Ford is always dropped into a conversation at this point. Response: Yes - I mean Cap and Trade and the implications associated with it - as in reduction of low cost supplies. My guess is we just differ here. I think the long term is much more important than the short term. We appear to differ at the most basic level, whether global warming is a sufficient danger that it needs to be addressed. I don't see us getting into that conversation. But it's at the root of our disagreement. Response: I am referring here to the unilateral abrogation of bond holder rights. The bottom line here is lending to unionized companies will require higher rates. I see your moral outrage; I fail to see any serious danger to the health of the republic. Incidentally, if you want to distinguish your response from mine in your posts, you can use the html italics code. Begin the relevant sentence with "" (without the quotation marks; I put them in to keep from triggering the html machine) and end the last sentence of a bloc with "". That extra slash signals the end.