Someone once told me that instead of doing what I do for a living, I should be designing drugs or new more efficient uses of energy. Instead, he said, I was just pushing paper for a living and benefiting no one. I told him that for starters, the people with money invested with me would probably feel differently about me benefiting no one, but even with that said, I’d be happy to design new drugs or better engines or whatever, as soon as the government gets out of the way and let me get compensated the way I’d like for work like that.
His response was “who says you should be the one to decide how you’re compensated?!” It was sort of a group discussion with most of the people involved being fairly literate, so I didn’t bother to respond. I just rolled my eyes and let his own stupidity show him for what he really was. Burt had I bothered to respond I would have said that in the end we all decide what we’re paid. When we say that we have a ‘free’ economy, that’s actually what we mean – that we are each ‘free’ to decide wither to offer our labor for the price people are willing to pay or not.
If you can’t get a job that pays what you would like then you have a few options. You can go back to school or get additional training. You can go into a different field, or move to a competitor or a different city or whatever. The point is, you can decide how to solve your own compensation problems. There are limits on this of course, both in the marketplace and in your personal ability. I’m pretty good at skeet shooting but I can’t seem to get anyone to pay me what I’d like for it because there just isn’t much of a market. There is apparently a big market for shooting baskets, but I can’t get anyone to pay me big for that either because I’m no good at it. Freedom is not without it’s burdens.
But on the whole, within each of our own limits, we are still free to solve our own economic problems in the way we see as best to solve them. But this may all be about to change.
It’s no secret that Obama is a fan of ‘big labor’. His affection for labor unions trumps everything, even his other ‘liberally approved’ desires like creating jobs, or cleaning up the gulf oil spill or fixing the healthcare system. There is apparently no agenda item that he won’t sacrifice on the big labor alter. And the talk now is that if the Democrats lose control of congress in November (which looks increasingly likely) they will use the lame duck session to pass the labor union’s last big hope – the ‘card check’ bill.
I’ve written about this bill before. It would basically eliminate anonymous voting for unionization votes, and allow union reps to find out who voted against them so that they could be ‘persuaded’ to vote yes. It’s a bill specifically designed to eliminate economic freedom and to make sure everyone has their compensation decided by an uninterested third party. It will lead to disaster in more ways that most people realize.
I feel like I’ve been writing about this forever. I’m saying the same thing over and over again, and people still don’t get it. Want to see what the benefit of a labor union is? Look at the blue collar jobs of Flint, Detroit, and Cleveland which are now in Cuidad-Juarez. Look at the Steel industry which was in Pittsburg and Cleveland but is now in Shanghai. Look at the shuttered offices of Pan-Am. But that was the past, instead let’s look at the wildly under funded pensions of California, Illinois and New Jersey. Look at the thousands of unionized civil servants retired in their 40’s and living their six figure dream on the taxpayer’s dime. Look at all the teachers in New York or DC who can’t be fired but are parked in offices doing nothing at full pay. Now imagine that every industry in America is run with the efficiency of the Auto or Steel industries. Imagine our entire workforce as (un) productive and (un) accountable as the civil servants or public school teachers.
Unions breed excess. Unions increase cost without adding any economic value. They are designed to distort behavior and to prevent natural consequences. They try to reward failure and punish success. They are the most economically illiterate of our interest groups. To consider strengthening their position is economic suicide.
If the lame duck congress passes a card check bill the consequences to our nation will be disastrous. If they do it over the objection of the American people it will be economic treason.
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