Dragon
Senior Member
- Sep 16, 2011
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The only way a union can create jobs is by assimilating other non-union companies into their collective.
It's easy to see that this is untrue by reference to history. There has never been a time in this country when the majority of workers belonged to a union; the highest union strength as a percentage was 39% of the private-sector work force, achieved in 1959.
Also, the mechanism presented in the rest of your post is simply not the way that unions create jobs and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about (even if it were possible, which it's not).
Higher wages = more consumer demand. More consumer demand = more investment to produce goods and services. More investment = more jobs. It's really quite simple and requires no dubious total control over what goods are put on the market, which unions have never achieved and don't even strive for.
When unions were strong in this country, wages were high (not only in union shops; the way strong unions push up wages across the board is well documented) and so was consumer demand. I'm referring to the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and on into the early 1970s. The economy performed better during those three decades than at any time in our history before or since. Recessions were shorter and milder, and times of growth stronger with fuller employment. Growth in per capita GDP was higher than in either the earlier or later decades (both of which featured weaker unions, as well as other differences contributing to wider income gaps) by more than two to one.
Employers dislike unions because they keep wages, and so labor costs, high. But for that very reason, unions are good for the economy. Unions create jobs.
Actually it's the investment of business that makes it possible for corporations to create a product that consumers will WANT to purchase for themselves. Without investment capitol there is no "reality" behind the creative process. Where would Apple be if there were no investors to go behind such creative ideas as the i-Phone, i-Pad, or i-Tunes? How many consumers have a desire to own an Blu-Ray player, Compact Disc, LCD or Plasma because of the investments behind the creation?
There are two answers to this. One is that you, like Grunt, don't seem to understand what "demand" means. Demand is not desire, or rather, desire is only one necessary component of demand. Demand doesn't just mean that people want a product -- it means they want it and have the money to buy it. And that's where wages, and hence unions, come into the picture.
The second is that a world "without investment capital" is not something we ever need to fear. Sure, if all investment capital were to magically and mysteriously vanish into the ether, we'd be in a bad way, but that simply isn't going to happen. The reality is that a modern industrial economy always has more investment capital that it can invest in the production of wealth. The limiting factor on investment is never how much capital exists, but always how much investment is justified by consumer demand, because the latter is always less than the former.
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