Labor unions are the backbone of a healthy, balanced economy. Without them, we would still have sweatshops, child labor, and no workplace protections - just like China. Fire the bosses!
Aw c'mon, Jim. Show a little sympathy for those poor underworked, overpaid bosses. Try to imagine their lives, never experiencing the joy of having to choose between food and rent, or medical care and auto repair. Sheer deprivation if you ask me.
Excuse me...... Capitalism destroys competitive markets ? Jim ... pass that stuff my way!
If you check Capitalism in Webster's you find sufficient information to learn that Capitalism cannot exist without a healthy competitive market ! Competition is the backbone of Capitalism.
What we DO have and it's killing our nation is the tremendous number of Monopolies in this country today..... for it's difficult to become a billionaire if you don't own a monopoly ..... meaning kill the competition and take it all! Raise those prices without any fear of competition.
Unions probably saved Europe and the U.S. from Communism as it was a less drastic means of fighting the economic oppression during the early industrial period.
The series The men who made America is an excellent example of how workers would be treated if unions hadn't been formed. I wouldn't be collecting my pension after 35 years and the vultures of capitalism would be picking my bones clean. Another good episode of the irony of capitalism on the Hightower zone
Vultures of Capitalism? Capitalism allows those who want to work harder for extra to attain their dream, and I can agree to that ..... but there is a couple small but important things to consider in Capitalism - it can allow those who attain such prosperity to buy all others in their market and go on to raise prices with no control. Thus, we supposedly have strict laws forbidding monopolies .... antitrust laws. That hasn't work as there's a marriage between the billionaires and Congress..... due to Citizens United. There's answers of course - tax hell out of those with fortunes .... the first step would be to eliminate the 22 volume IRS Tax Code and make it a 1 or 2 volume Code..... eliminating the lawyers with accounting degrees the ability to understand the IRS Tax Code better than the IRS! Many billionaires pay no taxes legally! Also a Tax Cap where making a fortune such as 400 million dollars would trigger far increased taxes.
Not exactly. Capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money. We're supposed to conflate capitalism with private enterprise, but they are not the same. Private enterprise ("free" enterprise is a '50s econ propaganda word invention) is the privately owned production of physically real goods and services. That ownership can be collective, like in co-ops and worker owned businesses. In econSpeak, this is known as the Real Economy. As in tangible production.
In contrast, the now dominant financial sector. Which amounts to manipulation of money generated by the actual production of other people or more likely, conjured out of thin air by banks and other nearly unregulated financial institutions as loans to other manipulators. Much of that deregulation courtesy the Clinton admin.
Vultures they are--drooling as they watch once vital industries die so they can strip the bones. Or swooping in for the kill as LBOs. Prettified term is now PE, private equity. Another nasty trick is stock buy-backs. Once limited to 2% of profits, it's not unusual to be 90% or more. Not one new thing is produced by any of this and nothing goes to R & D. IMHO accelerated trickle up because they know the econopathic system will fail once there's nothing more to extract from bottom wage workers and polluted lands.
I agree there is nothing wrong with people earning profits because of their own effort. Like barber shops, works sold directly by artists, corner grocery stores, fix-it businesses, veterinary clinics, organic farms, a local bar and the band playing there. Real people providing actual goods and services to the community they live in.
Why don't these greedy goons realize that the workers need pay checks to buy the stuff they produce? If the corporate bosses increased wages, the workers would buy more stuff . The corporate bosses would then have to consider installing a second shift. More people are hired and factory overhead is spread over two shifts, resulting in more profits for the Corporation. Oh, and if the prices of goods go up, profits go up even more! What is not to like?
We, the amalgamated DCP-GSW (Dirt Clod Peasants and Greasy, Sweaty Workers) declare Jim Hightower to be the winner of this week's interwebs for the neologism "laissez-fairyland."
"A left hook slap down of that insufferable Invisible Hand!"--the ghost of Studs Terkel.
Longshoremen are striking because of Ports unwillingness to provide a liveable wage. Wait, as the Port and grocery chains increase prices using the strike as the reason.
Over 30 years ago the ILWU dropped the "men" part of the old title. In recognition of the many longshorewomen. And given their radical roots in '30s industrial style organizing rather than by craft, they always were inclusive. Including being racially integrated when this wasn't common.
A version of the right wing libertarians and their smug certainty they are Social Darwinist "winners." The rest of us? Unimportant and irrelevant.
They either don't know or deliberately distort how nature actually functions. And they neglect both their legacy advantages and the fact that no, they didn't do it all by themselves. They're not the rugged individualists of myth. Bootstrap pulling and the like.
For example, almost all plants, including crops, and in particular trees, grow in obligate symbiosis with fungus connecting to plant roots. That alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of existence on Earth, and there are many other symbioses. Including in and on the human body.
Did this econopathic royalty design, say, the cars they drive? Did they mine the ore, smelt the metal, pour it into car shapes, assemble the pieces? Do they do their own medical care, including operations? Do they grow their own food, harvest it, cook it? Oh sure. They're simply manipulators of that abstraction known as money.
And BTW, that "pick yourself up by your own bootstraps" was meant to demonstrate its impossibility. A way of saying that people disadvantaged by class or race or gender don't start anywhere near the same place as the wealthy and well connected. That's why the idea of the common good was so important for so long. We're in this together.
Unfortunately for the econ determinists, some of us dirt clod peasants and greasy, sweaty workers can read, write, and think. We know who keeps everything running. The best example is the transportation industry. Where the execs have all the authority and huge salaries while having little of the responsibility; that's the licensed airline pilots, train engineers, ship crews, truck drivers, and those who maintain all the machinery. Jobs that management cannot even do because few of them have ever picked up a tool in their entire lives.
There's an interesting history of health insurance at https://www.stretchdollar.com/posts/health-insurance-history-how-this-messy-system-began that says that the original group health plan started at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, TX in 1923, but it wasn't employer sponsored. It was open to all teachers in Texas and was strictly voluntary. The plan was started by the hospital administrators as a means of recovering lost revenues from patients who couldn't pay. It was set up for teachers because, at the time, most of the patients who couldn't pay their bills were teachers.
Employer group health plans didn't begin until WWII when wages were frozen. Corporations then began to "offer" to set up and pay for group health plans for their employees. I can't find out which corporation was first to do this, but I suspect the "offer" wasn't voluntary and that union pressure for employee compensation (remember, wages were frozen) had a lot to do with it.
Labor unions are the backbone of a healthy, balanced economy. Without them, we would still have sweatshops, child labor, and no workplace protections - just like China. Fire the bosses!
Aw c'mon, Jim. Show a little sympathy for those poor underworked, overpaid bosses. Try to imagine their lives, never experiencing the joy of having to choose between food and rent, or medical care and auto repair. Sheer deprivation if you ask me.
Nice touch of sarcasm there. Our collective hearts bleed for them. NOT!
Excuse me...... Capitalism destroys competitive markets ? Jim ... pass that stuff my way!
If you check Capitalism in Webster's you find sufficient information to learn that Capitalism cannot exist without a healthy competitive market ! Competition is the backbone of Capitalism.
What we DO have and it's killing our nation is the tremendous number of Monopolies in this country today..... for it's difficult to become a billionaire if you don't own a monopoly ..... meaning kill the competition and take it all! Raise those prices without any fear of competition.
Unions probably saved Europe and the U.S. from Communism as it was a less drastic means of fighting the economic oppression during the early industrial period.
The series The men who made America is an excellent example of how workers would be treated if unions hadn't been formed. I wouldn't be collecting my pension after 35 years and the vultures of capitalism would be picking my bones clean. Another good episode of the irony of capitalism on the Hightower zone
Vultures of Capitalism? Capitalism allows those who want to work harder for extra to attain their dream, and I can agree to that ..... but there is a couple small but important things to consider in Capitalism - it can allow those who attain such prosperity to buy all others in their market and go on to raise prices with no control. Thus, we supposedly have strict laws forbidding monopolies .... antitrust laws. That hasn't work as there's a marriage between the billionaires and Congress..... due to Citizens United. There's answers of course - tax hell out of those with fortunes .... the first step would be to eliminate the 22 volume IRS Tax Code and make it a 1 or 2 volume Code..... eliminating the lawyers with accounting degrees the ability to understand the IRS Tax Code better than the IRS! Many billionaires pay no taxes legally! Also a Tax Cap where making a fortune such as 400 million dollars would trigger far increased taxes.
Not exactly. Capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money. We're supposed to conflate capitalism with private enterprise, but they are not the same. Private enterprise ("free" enterprise is a '50s econ propaganda word invention) is the privately owned production of physically real goods and services. That ownership can be collective, like in co-ops and worker owned businesses. In econSpeak, this is known as the Real Economy. As in tangible production.
In contrast, the now dominant financial sector. Which amounts to manipulation of money generated by the actual production of other people or more likely, conjured out of thin air by banks and other nearly unregulated financial institutions as loans to other manipulators. Much of that deregulation courtesy the Clinton admin.
Vultures they are--drooling as they watch once vital industries die so they can strip the bones. Or swooping in for the kill as LBOs. Prettified term is now PE, private equity. Another nasty trick is stock buy-backs. Once limited to 2% of profits, it's not unusual to be 90% or more. Not one new thing is produced by any of this and nothing goes to R & D. IMHO accelerated trickle up because they know the econopathic system will fail once there's nothing more to extract from bottom wage workers and polluted lands.
I agree there is nothing wrong with people earning profits because of their own effort. Like barber shops, works sold directly by artists, corner grocery stores, fix-it businesses, veterinary clinics, organic farms, a local bar and the band playing there. Real people providing actual goods and services to the community they live in.
Why don't these greedy goons realize that the workers need pay checks to buy the stuff they produce? If the corporate bosses increased wages, the workers would buy more stuff . The corporate bosses would then have to consider installing a second shift. More people are hired and factory overhead is spread over two shifts, resulting in more profits for the Corporation. Oh, and if the prices of goods go up, profits go up even more! What is not to like?
You are making a ton of sense. Why can't those bosses see this? Short answer: because of the dollar signs in their eyes.
They realize it. They just don't care.
We, the amalgamated DCP-GSW (Dirt Clod Peasants and Greasy, Sweaty Workers) declare Jim Hightower to be the winner of this week's interwebs for the neologism "laissez-fairyland."
"A left hook slap down of that insufferable Invisible Hand!"--the ghost of Studs Terkel.
Longshoremen are striking because of Ports unwillingness to provide a liveable wage. Wait, as the Port and grocery chains increase prices using the strike as the reason.
Over 30 years ago the ILWU dropped the "men" part of the old title. In recognition of the many longshorewomen. And given their radical roots in '30s industrial style organizing rather than by craft, they always were inclusive. Including being racially integrated when this wasn't common.
A version of the right wing libertarians and their smug certainty they are Social Darwinist "winners." The rest of us? Unimportant and irrelevant.
They either don't know or deliberately distort how nature actually functions. And they neglect both their legacy advantages and the fact that no, they didn't do it all by themselves. They're not the rugged individualists of myth. Bootstrap pulling and the like.
For example, almost all plants, including crops, and in particular trees, grow in obligate symbiosis with fungus connecting to plant roots. That alone makes cooperation the dominant mode of existence on Earth, and there are many other symbioses. Including in and on the human body.
Did this econopathic royalty design, say, the cars they drive? Did they mine the ore, smelt the metal, pour it into car shapes, assemble the pieces? Do they do their own medical care, including operations? Do they grow their own food, harvest it, cook it? Oh sure. They're simply manipulators of that abstraction known as money.
And BTW, that "pick yourself up by your own bootstraps" was meant to demonstrate its impossibility. A way of saying that people disadvantaged by class or race or gender don't start anywhere near the same place as the wealthy and well connected. That's why the idea of the common good was so important for so long. We're in this together.
Unfortunately for the econ determinists, some of us dirt clod peasants and greasy, sweaty workers can read, write, and think. We know who keeps everything running. The best example is the transportation industry. Where the execs have all the authority and huge salaries while having little of the responsibility; that's the licensed airline pilots, train engineers, ship crews, truck drivers, and those who maintain all the machinery. Jobs that management cannot even do because few of them have ever picked up a tool in their entire lives.
Thanks again for the FACTS .
Jim, your columns are like a refreshing drink of a frothy cold beer. Keep 'em coming.
Thanks again Jim for clarifying this issue.
Love what you write about, love how you say it!
wow! what a lot i don't know! thanks
I read somewhere that employees insurance was at first created by a company in Texas. I don’t really believe that. What is the truth?
There's an interesting history of health insurance at https://www.stretchdollar.com/posts/health-insurance-history-how-this-messy-system-began that says that the original group health plan started at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, TX in 1923, but it wasn't employer sponsored. It was open to all teachers in Texas and was strictly voluntary. The plan was started by the hospital administrators as a means of recovering lost revenues from patients who couldn't pay. It was set up for teachers because, at the time, most of the patients who couldn't pay their bills were teachers.
Employer group health plans didn't begin until WWII when wages were frozen. Corporations then began to "offer" to set up and pay for group health plans for their employees. I can't find out which corporation was first to do this, but I suspect the "offer" wasn't voluntary and that union pressure for employee compensation (remember, wages were frozen) had a lot to do with it.
I still want a people's union!