Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (982755)

11/19/2016 6:51:20 PM

From: koan

Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1574118

What you posted are corporate right wing talking points. Do you know how badly workers were treated before unions? Google worker conditions any time in the world before unions. There's a ton of information about how badly workers were treated in the early 1900s not only with regard to wages, but also with regard to working conditions. Safety.

Employers abused workers terribly. The workers got together and had the most horrible battles just for basic safety conditions. It is naïve to think that employers are going to treat workers fairly on their own. There is no history anywhere in the world to substantiate that.

In fact I can show you, where there is a perfect correlation between the decline of unions starting about 1980 and middle class wages. Employees worked hard and bled to get some rights. And the large corporations have been successful in getting rid of unions which means they can pay workers less.

And it sounds good to talk about government shouldn't have unions. But you have to understand that without unions they are at the mercy of legislators that could care less what happens to the government workers.

I have seen legislators force one person to do two people's work time and again. Why not? If you don't care what happens to people you just pile it on and most people need jobs and just try to do it. The financial officers are routinely abused. I have heard them crying at night behind closed doors from the heavy workload, but unable to quit because they need a job.

This idea of replacing public with private is just crazy. There are certain things that need to remain in the public sector, for the simple reason that in the public sector decisions are made by democracy i.e. us.. The perfect example are prisons. Prisons need to remain public, because when a society imprisons somebody they need to take responsibility for them and make sure that they are not abused and are taking care of under certain Democratic ethical conditions.

When you turn it over to private institutions with a profit motive, there is incentive to not only arrest people illegally to fill the prisons, but to abuse them and to keep things like food and medical costs low in order to increase the bottom line.

As far as the EPA goes, I would argue we need more regulation not less. The majority of groundwater in the United States is not fit to drink. Millions of people across this country are getting their water from unsafe streams and rivers and lakes because of pollution.

Mostly what the EPA does is just simply put rules and regulations together to protect people , to prevent people from discharging their septic systems into a creek or stream that has fish and people drink out of, preventing people from discharging Mercury and other chemicals directly into drinking water, and to make sure the people do not put septic systems in right next to Wells that provide drinking water.

Basic sanitation. Read up on how we lived before basic sanitation.

Most of what the EPA does is just ABC common sense regulations.

I don't think you understand, that the large corporations lobby to get rid of regulations because they don't want to pay to have it done right. It increases their bottom line.

Capitalism has to be regulated by democracy. That should be common sense.

<<

>> You have some wild idea that the government is this unworkable bureaucracy, that needs to be replaced, but you have never posted exactly what that would be.

I've not talked about "replacing" it. I would just limit it to doing things that for some reason cannot be done by the private sector, get rid of the unions, let people make their own arrangements for health care (which is the biggest problem facing government today), and eliminate useless departments like Education and greatly reduce the scope of EPA. And fix the Commmerce Clause.