Wow. You have no knowledge of unions at all. Unions are extremely weak in the US. And pretty much every business has found a way to circumvent them. Not that it is in their interest to do so. The government is pretty heavily anti union in the US. As such unions have trivial power. But is insanely prob business. And that makes business extremely powerful. The power relationship between business and labor is so extremely
That weakness of unions lowers the living standard of the middle class as a whole. It lowers productivity growth. And it lowers the growth of the US economy.
You want something that makes literally everyone poorer.
Please, feel free to respond by either negating with argumentation some of the things you disagree with that I've said, or supporting some of your bald assertions.
For instance I'd like to know how unions raise productivity, or rather their lack lowers productivity growth. I note that the U.S. despite having the lowest level of Unionization in the G-7 nonetheless was the only country in the G-7 which registered productivity gains every year from 1990-2005. I also find it interesting that China which has had massive productivity increases for years now and has almost certainly been the medium term growth champion effectively has no trade unions.
You seem to think that it is not in a business' interest to avoid becoming unionized? I can't help but recall growing up in the rust belt as one unionized industry after another collapsed. With the added advantage of being unionized, how could these industries fail? They had market share, brand recognition, scale, and the helping hand of the union to offer suggestions on how to maximize payrolls and avoid adopting technical innovations that reduced labor costs.
Even Hollywood, which is the last of the giant American unionized industries produces more and more overseas where the main advantage (and probably the sole net advantage) is escaping its own unions.
You accuse me of wanting something that makes everyone poorer. But a union paycheck is only an advantage over a non-union paycheck where it actually exists (ie where it hasn't been driven out of business by competition), and even then it's advantage is largely in the hands of the union member. Workers in other industries have to pay the higher prices for union produced goods with their smaller paychecks, exacerbating the inequalities between the upper and lower middle classes.
We'd be much better off with a stronger social safety net (publicly provided health care) and tax reforms that get rid of every tax that hits incomes, production, employment. This would allow American business to hire with the most minimal costs, which would allow them to pay higher wages and create more jobs. Of course we'd want to eliminate illegal immigration (easily done when politicians put their mind to it) in order to protect our own underclass, even as we carefully allowed high wage potential people from around the world to immigrate legally.
We not only don't need unions to improve our standards of living, it is easier without them. No unions simplify decision making and lower costs. If government policies insure safe and fair work rules, decent health care for all Americans. and allows employers to maximize workers and workers to maximize incomes we could both compete internationally and make good wages throughout our economy.