In summary: Those in the 99th to 99.9th percentile of wealth may be richer than those in the 98th percentile, but they don't enjoy most advantages implicitly granted to the top 0.1% of Americans.
I think this is a very important point. The 1% is not the enemy except for in symbolic terms.
The enemy is a much smaller group of individuals/corporations than that, and perhaps even, the enemy is more of a "process" than it is any group. I doubt Wal*Mart executives sit up at the top of their tower and plan about how they can tear apart society for their own self interest, but rather, there is a whole process and system built up that is doing exactly that.
I was ready to agree until you said Wal*Mart, in particular in the context of 'tearing apart society'.
Economists--including progressives, such as Matt Yglesais--often comment on the bipartisan fetishization of small businesses and liberal demonization of large ones. This attitude often seems motivated by isolated incidents--the tendency of any deep pocketed company to attract bad press and lawsuits--not the general effect of large business on people as accounted for by sound economic data. In general, large businesses tend to offer better jobs and more advanced economies tend to have more, larger businesses. Nor should Wal-Mart be constructed as harming the lower class, as their very low prices are especially important for the lower class which they achieve by real efficiencies of scale for which mom-and-pop stores are generally incapable. I don't have time to find citations everything, but for the last claim you can check out http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/fe...
In some markets WalMart is losing market share or decreased revenue growth because it has priced itself above what the 'lower class' can afford. This is largely why dollar (or less) stores have done so well in recent years in North America.
Unions in America are broken; no one has problems with a group of people organizing as long as they don't get special rights. For instance, being able to fire a person when they don't show up for work, e.g. firing strikers. Or look at what the NLRB is doing to Boeing as they try to open up a new plant in SC. It's unfortunate, but unions are a cancer - they enshrine an us vs them attitude, they demand special rights, they encourage bad management, and in general act as a parasite sucking as much benefit as they can from their host.
> Unions are a cancer
I don't wish to start a flame war so I shall be measured here.
Unions came in to being to fight massive, widespread exploration of workers that today would be considered criminal. Unions are still required for their original purpose across the globe ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides)
I agree that the USA has been curiously free of unionisation (having 5% of your population as illegal indentured servants probably helps) but most western countries have had the unions win their important battles and it will take a while, if ever, before unions as they were in late 19c early 20c will be needed again
oddly it feels like movements such as occupy are going to become the new union movement.
Anyway my point was that unions = cancer is such a self evidently wrong thing to say for billions of workers that it even makes cancer cringe.
Many battles unions claim to have "won" were already transformation that were happening that they took credit for.
Also unions in the US have reprehensible tactics such as advocating - card checks for voting (intimidation), unfunded pensions, forcing nonunion members to pay dues, having closed shops, etc.
In general, as a community gets richer work conditions improve. When a community first starts working it doesn't have access to the intangible wealth that richer communies have and thus they need to work more hours to make up for this deficiency. As time progresses the accumulate wealth - build roads, infrastructure, housing, stores, have savings. And so can afford to work less, as they work less they start sending children to school instead of the factory (housing and food can be earned by the parents), which then increases the wealth as they are able to work on tasks that require more specialized labor. The better working conditions achieved in America vs China are the result of capital investment and not unions.
Often times unions use their power to cement the position in industry, and use labor law to decrease competition (think of it as regulatory capture). For example there is the case of LOCHNER v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF NEW YORK:
"The true origins of the Bakeshop Act lie in an economic conflict between unionized New York bakers, who labored in large shops and lobbied relentlessly in favor of the law, and their nonunionized, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant competitors, who tended to work longer hours in small, old-fashioned bakeries. “A ten-hour day would not only aid those unionized bakeries who had not successfully demanded that their hours be reduced,” Bernstein observes, “but would also drive out of business many old-fashioned bakeries that depended on flexible labor schedules.” The large corporate bakeries joined the union in supporting the Bakeshop Act. After all, it was in their economic interest to favor regulations that crippled the competition." (http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/14/lochner-isnt-a-dirty-w...)
Now this isn't to say that unions didn't accomplish anything or to say that they didn't have a positive impact in some ways; I just think that 1. unions get a lot of credit for things they have a mild impact on 2. people ignore all of the horrible things that they do
I agree capital investment generates wealth. Unions represent one means of distributing (not re-distribuing) that wealth - ensure that the labour used to transform x into wealth get a larger share of pie so they can for example afford schooling this increasing the speed of wealth creation.
Unions get credit for distributing wealth to the workers faster than owners of capital would do, and for defending individuals against exploration ( and the point isthat without unions (or other organised collective action) each of us is an explotable individual)
As for the bad things, I just ask what I would choose to do in that situation. HN top choice is start up a competing foxconn that treats workers better. But I fully understand the other thought process:
if the other guy has an army and enforces discipline it would be foolish of you if you thought individual spirit and the invisible hand were going to be any damn use
so for my money unions are just the more militant end of a spectrum that has co-operatives and workers collectives
somewhere in the middle and Cadbury on the far end.
All of the spectrum is about how to distribute the new wealth being generated. It does not all have to go to the owners of capital ( frankly I feel the term Capitalism is misnamed. I would prefer unimpededmarketpricesignalling but is suspect it won't catch on:-)
[edit: can't spell on iPhone plus went off on a tangent. But I would be very interested if anyone knows of research on effect on blue collar wages of the massive influx of illegal workers into USA. This is something the UK as an island has little of.
Pre-existing unions that are past their prime, and already served their purpose become a cancer because they don't disband themselves when they become superfluous.
On the other hand, (at least in the past) when Walmart knew that someone was attempting to start a union, they would bring in a team that would wire the store up with a ton of extra security cameras. Then they would attempt to identify the ringleaders and either fire them or harass them (to encourage them to quit). Is this a business tactic that you approve of?
It's tactic I approve of because they're introducing violence into what should be a voluntary arrangement. If they didn't get special legal privileges as a union, then I'd be against it Walmart discouraging it. When someone starts unionizing, unfortunately in the US they're inviting the a man with a gun to the negotiating table - it no longer is a voluntary agreement. For instance the government can force companies to deal with union negotiations even if the company doesn't want to; you can't fire people for striking; you can't file trespassing complaints against union members, etc. I don't know about you, but when I'm working with someone - I want it to be amicable and don't want them strong arming me. If I think they will then I'll choose not to work for them, I see no difference here.
If this is the attitude you have going into a union negotiation, you're not going to reach an agreement. When I'm negotiating with someone, I want them to be amicable and not accuse me of being "the man with a gun".
To be honest, I was just making a point using terms a lot of people could identify with. I would agree that Wal*Mart is actually an effective social wealth creator, probably more so than any government welfare program.
