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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (8113)	2/4/2012 3:16:35 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 85487

The question is irrelevant to the point your trying to make. Your question is somewhat similar to "when did you stop beating your wife?". In asking it your assuming things that aren't true. If the answer is "never", it would only support your point if having unions was the only change since the beginning of labor unions, but a much bigger change is the economic and technological development in the interim. Labor unions have origins that go back at least to the medieval guilds perhaps longer. Yes working conditions where horrible back then, so in that sense yes the answer is never. But conditions were still horrible a thousand years later. All the organizing and carteling of labor didn't solve the problem. Free market capitalism, and technological advancement did. Take today's unions, or if you prefer the unions at the high of their power, put them back in time (retaining all their power) to the 1800s. Worker conditions and pay would at best only marginally improve (and in the long term, the extra union activity might slow the improvement by impeding economic growth) and would still be much worse than what we have today in reality, or what we would have today without unions. You keep talking about the facts and the answers. I notice I'm the only one in our conversation relying on and showing actual facts. I dispute your statements, and use logic or facts to show how they are wrong. You dispute my statements without anything to support your dismissals.