As national support for unions approaches record levels, interviews reveal: a rarefied form of progressive leadership threatens to dampen their appeal among workers.
The Democrats outsourced the working class to China in the 1990’s, and for my entire adult life, whenever they are in power, labor suffers and wealth inequality grows.
The Democrats might talk about Union issues, but in the end they promote the very policies that destroy the US middle class. Workers have a better chance of being heard by populist Republicans than Democrats that are more interested in giving men a civil right to all female private spaces, and destroying the supply chain (and with it jobs), than about factor workers or blue collar workers anywhere. Democrats wouldn’t have outsourced the middle class and shut down factories from coast to coast if they actually cared about union workers.
Team D is but the political expression of the class power of the PMC, with a few crumbs tossed to minorities. In a similar vein, Team R is but the political expression of the class power of the local gentry, with a few crumbs tossed to evangelicals and poorer whites.
Once you view contemporary US politics in this context, all will be revealed.
I had high hopes for this piece, but was ultimately disappointed.
Democrats' woke "Abolish ICE" agenda, one that is endorsed by people like the leader of SEIU, is the elephant in the room. You can be pro-open borders or pro-labor, but you can't be both.
Yet Democrat pols are out there loudly countering opposition to their globalist agenda by accusing detractors of xenophobia. Why is the "party of labor" facilitating the importation of cheap surplus labor? And why are we letting them getting away with that?
I should have added that when the average frustrated PMC yuppie hears "more immigrants", that yuppie thinks "Oh, goodie! Ethnic restaurants and cheaper cleaners and au pairs!"
When the average blue collar worker hears "more immigrants", that worker thinks "less jobs, less money, longer lines."
I am generally all for immigration and immigrants, but let's not pretend that they affect everyone equally.
I am generally against immigration so long as there is less than full employment. The the law of supply and demand is a thing, and citizenship should be too.
That's why low wage Americans, women and minorities saw 2/3 of the wage gains from 2017-2019 went to them.
Shut down the border (or take it more seriously) and you create demand from employers to actually hire low skilled low educated people who are American citizens often giving them their first shot at a real job.
Which is now gone. I understand there are another 1.5 million heading to the border right now and outside of TX and AZ Governors doing what they're doing with their Mexican Governor counterparts....it's going to be tough sledding for poorly educated low skilled workers in our urban cities.
Thank God they then have Democrats who will pull out their taxpayer checkbook for more welfare benefits provided they vote D in November.
thanks to widespread, unchecked discrimination, low paying jobs are not just for low-skilled, low-education workers. I have met more Black American college-educated store clerks, delivery clerks, entry-level customer service reps, etc. Full disclosure, : I am ridiculously underemployed, with a graduate professional degree.
I guess you are too young to recall, or have forgotten, the havoc wreaked on the US auto industry because the UAW created massive production inefficiencies and had tied management's hands to the point that it could not compete at all with the Japanese. In the early 1970's I worked with an itinerant from Michigan on an amusement pier, This clown had previously been a UAW employee at GM, until he got bored and decided to wander around the country. He bragged about how he and his coworkers used to evade work all day, get drunk on the job, and sabotage cars by such amusing pranks as putting an empty beer bottle inside a door panel to cause a severe rattle when the car was driven over bumpy roads. So, you are against immigration until all of the native-born assholes like him have lucrative jobs?
Well put ! I too remember those huge errors by UAW. Now, the Japanese produce the majority of personal autos in the USA. With the South Koreans catching up quickly.
Look at how short sighted the public teacher's unions have been lately. They milked C-19 for everything they could and then some. Overpaid and under worked. Public schools will start losing ground very soon and very fast. The next revolution: eliminating the Marxists from higher education system. They are going broke from being Woke!
I worked 4 summers at a soybean processing plant that was union and as a summer fill-in, I was the only non union employee allowed to work inside the plant.
I watched union guys scream at Supervisors who were merely turning a wrench to shut off a valve before our main boiler blew up...then staged a one day walkout threatening to file a grievance because the Plant Superintendent ( a former Union Steward) refused to testify. Boy was I busy during that 24 hours sprinting from job to job to job
But you are right...far too often the first conversation while punching in was "where are we going to hide today."
I wanted nothing to do with it but I sympathized with these guys with barely a 10th grade education whose only opportunity in life was this plant processing soybeans 24 hours a day 365 days a week until they got to age 65. If that had been me, I would have taken the manlift to the top of the grain elevator and launched myself off the side.
There are takers in any union, but I do believe that is less than 5% of the union population who has such a sour attitude about their work and a defeatist attitude about their own opportuniities.
They used to whisper in my ear "Hey college boy..you should quit college and stay here..youi'll never make this much money."
Just did my taxes this week and I paid more in state income taxes alone than I would have ever made in 1 full year work at the soybean processing plant.
So let me get this straight Sammy ,one guy told you some stories and you think that represents every American citizen ever born. little far out there buddy, I think it's called bigotry you're an ignorant individual you use a lot of large words but obviously you don't have a clue what most of them mean. you may want to check yourself there sammy . just saying you seem like an absolute moron I'm sure you're a pleasure to be around And have many friends who enjoy your company immensely or you just sit in mommy's basement and post I'm thinking the later
I should add: immigration has always been about replacing native workers. The "average [non-Black American] blue collar worker" you speak of is descended from immigrants who were recruited to replace slave labor both in Northern factories and in Southern cotton fields.
Neither they, nor their descendants had any problem with immigration so long as their jobs (and not incidentally, their social standing relative to Blacks) were secure. But now that Capital is looking to replace them, via unregulated illegal immigration at the bottom of the wage scale and h1B visas at the top, white workers are starting to see it as a problem.
This is just one of the myriad ways that white supremacy (the kind with country club membership and beautiful manners) has fucked over the white working class. Aren't you guys tired of it?
"white supremacy" - without a trigger warning! Oh my. Can't see race has much to do with the fact that we are a majority white nation derived from western European stock and therefore some became rich. Rich minorities, yes there are some, also find ways to make more money.
" majority white nation derived from western European stock and therefore some became rich"
If this is not sarcasm, get the fuck out of here.
"Some became rich" through systemic kidnapping, rape, torture, and oh yeah, wage theft perpetrated on millions of victims over the course of 250 years. And all of it was sanctioned by the US govt under the auspices of the singularly brutal system of chattel slavery; a system that only some Western Europeans have ever been sadistic and barbaric enough to practice.
As for "rich minorities," say American descendants of slavery if that's what you mean. We - not Hispanics (an invented group by the way), Asians, the Irish, nor even Native Americans, who also enslaved us - are the only group whose labor was legally stolen, and who were denied the trillions in government handouts that we designed to, and literally did MAKE the white middle and much of the upper classes.
White "success", just like Black "failure," is 95% government manufactured.
But don't take my word for it. Go read "When Affirmative Action Was White." It will disabuse you of your laughably false and self-serving idea that you're more clever, inventive, hardworking, or deserving than we are. Your real superpower is your tendency towards brutality and larceny, and shamelessness.
By "workers," I mean employees; people whose work makes profits for someone else. As far as I know, the Native Americans weren't kicking up to anyone. They were just living life, with notions of private property famously bore no resemblance to Europeans'.
"Northern factory workers" were white, one immigration wave battling the previous wave from the start of mass immigration in the 1870's. The "great migration" of black Americans to the North didn't start until the First World War boom and massive labor shortages, Ford being one of the early champions of employing blacks. The second great migration North was during WW2 when sharecropping collapsed. Basic history.
And who said anything about the Great Migration? Millions of emancipated slaves got the hell out of Dodge and made their way to Northern and Western cities immediately after slavery ended. Millions more followed when Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow began.
Edited to add: The Great Migrations (plural) came later.
Read a book or two. Start with "How the Irish Became White".
In order to be PMC, does one need to be a professional and in management, or would being a worker who is a professional qualify. This question, is not me being sarcastic , I just want to see if I was considered in the PMC. I was a physical therapist who got paid very well, mostly because there was a P.T. labor shortage for nearly 40 years
Labor unions are but a Team D organization tool, but , like most tools, they have little influence on the master other than what is and isn't feasible to do with a hammer or whatever.
Unions draw dues from the # of members, not how much they are paid.
So they want 2 million new illegal immigrants coming over per year because eventually they'll join on to a meatpacking plant where they come through a Temp agency with no credentials...but they have a union card.
E-Verify for every single employer with a DUNS # in the USA is the only way to stop this exploitation of cheap slave-like labor.
It's why Sanctuary Cities exist. Those bar and restaurant owners don't want nobody poking around in the kitchen asking about immigration status. If they did, the kitchen would be cleared out in 10 minutes.
It's never been about labor, it's about power. It pains me to say this but in SoCal Hispanics unlike those communities in Texas and Florida behave like sheep following those pushing a unapologetic Marxist view of the world. Their inability to assimilate is tragic and while they enjoy and benefit from everything America offer's relative to opportunity they still have one foot firmly in the destructive relationship South of the border. They rarely question authority.
As if they were mutually exclusive. Cheap labor is about money is about power. The traitors in the south did not rebel bcuz they wanted power over slaves. They rebelled bcuz they wanted to steal the fruits of slave labor. Those ill-gotten profits gave them power.
Don’t forget the fact that organized labor is 100% behind socialized medicine. I am a 23 year union member myself that has wrestled with quitting the last 10 years. Socialized medicine will be just another burden on the union man. We will shoulder much of the cost thru our payroll taxes. I understand why the union bosses want it, it’s one less thing they would have to bargain with the company for come contract negotiations, but the membership is mislead if they think some crappy government health care system, paid for by union men will benefit us at all.
Good to point out workers have a better chance with populist Republicans, but those are still a small minority of the party. Establishment Republicans (most of them) are as damaging to the working class as the Democrat party.
Isn't it both interesting and ironic that thanks to their divisive anti-male identity politics, the Democrats have helped created a situation where the surest way for men to acquire exceptional minority treatment and find their way into safe/private spaces previously forbidden to them is to claim that they are actually women and identify as trans? I'm not saying that genuine gender dysmorphia does not exist, but the past decade has seen the emergence of the political trans and non-binary identitarian, the result of politics and trendy socialization rather than a quirk of neuro-biology.
I think you have to recognize at one time democrats were very pro union, back in the day, before Carter, or some time thereafter. Now the democrats are little different from the republicans in this regard. I still get the phone calls telling to vote for democrats and I just ignore them.
I recognize this is how it used to be, but also the way it is today is that Democrats are no friends to labor. Maybe they prop up individual unions for a few years here and there, but only until the plant gets outsourced, and only after mass immigration of cheap labor has suppressed wages universally (including union wages).
You saw a real shift in that party after Clinton, but it was moving in that direction decades before. They totally turned me off during the Trump years with their lying and scheming and maybe it was all about getting back to Ukraine so they could finish what they started. God help us!
Agreed. And one thing of importance you hit on here, NCmom, is how the Democrats currently hold identity politics in higher regard than economic issues that affect all workers, no matter their identity. This emotionally manipulative distraction from core worker issues detracts from needed class solidarity and instead divides us against each other, so that the system that is exploiting us gets a free pass. As much as the identitarians may give some lip service to hating capitalism, they are loved by capitalists in the DNC and Silicon Valley for good reason, and they sure do benefit from the support of capitalist media (both social and legacy) and company HR departments. They are among the best friends among the working class that the capitalists currently have, and the 1% has no illusions about this.
What makes you think universal healthcare is an improvement? I support the right to unionize but I’ll fight government run healthcare very hard because I want actual healthcare, not forced big pharma subscription plans using my own tax dollars.
I used to think we needed universal healthcare. I never had insurance in my entire adult life, so I learned to take responsibility for my own health. When I approached Medicare age, I was bombarded with offers for prescription benefits. When I told the representatives that I don't take any prescriptions, they were stunned! I have spent more in two years on Medicare premiums than I have spent my entire life on health care. The covid madness has further confirmed my belief that universal "healthcare" has little to do with actual care.
Big government mandated programs of any type only open the door for abuse and manipulation by those with agendas. We are supposed to be skeptical of government power and question those who hold that power...instead far too many jump at the chance to surrender their power as an individual to an agency or department in DC.
I agree. I don’t support government employee unions unless they are limited in scope and are banned from political endorsements or activity. They can only act for things that directly connect to the job and are non-political . It’s not taxpayer’s responsibility to fund unions for other people. I support the right of people in the private sector to unionize, though I think what mostly happens is union employees get paid slightly better right up until the bosses are bought off by politicians or their jobs outsourced all together.
It blows my mind seeing Jimmy dore wide awake on how horrible the government has bungled everything related to covid, and still says if we had Medicare for all that we could have saved so many more lives.
One of my main takeaways from covid is how awful universal healthcare would be. Modern day government can't run anything competently, and they are getting progressively worse.
The logic is unclear maybe if you think they have been handling covid well? But if you disagree with how they handled covid shots, early treatment, and treatments like remdesevir and ventilators, the idea of letting them run healthcare even more than they do now should scare you.
Great response! Please add the CDC/NIH IGNORING natural immunity! The biggest farce by Fauci et al. Comrade Charles from the Soviet Republic of Oregon is easily confused by thoughtful comments.
You have a point - government malfeasance would be a potential problem. Bear in mind, however, that medical practice would remain mostly private; government would just be the insurance company, like Medicare (but hopefully improved).
The big failures were in PUBLIC health, which is distinct from treatment and is mostly government now. Unfortunately, it had been cut to the bone - by both parties - well before Covid hit. Worse, it was severely politicized, arguably a crime against humanity. I think the Dems were the main culprits, but nobody was innocent. With luck, these huge pandemics only happen every hundred years or so, like this one vs. the 1918 flu, so there's plenty of time to forget what works and what it was like.
Ironically, Covid demonstrated that universal health care was feasible, because the government set out to pay for everything - just like in a public system. That part went OK, even though treatment and prevention both were misinformed - and it was used as a pretest for massive censorship.
I agree the government did a terrible job handling covid, but they did that with our current private insurance system. And I would argue the private insurance system is part of the reason it was handled so poorly. Our politicians are basically captured by the private insurance and pharma companies, and a Medicare for all system would take some power away from those companies. So I guess I agree with Jimmy Dore on this, I think Medicare for all would improve the government's handling of things like covid, or at least not really affect it much one way or the other.
Even if you can take out the private insurers, big pharma and its army of lobbyists remains the elephant in the room. They already get more than their money’s worth, with politicians, the FDA and CDC marketing the shots more aggressively than even the pharma companies will risk.
As usual NCmom you have a talent for accurately summarizing what has happened to our society as our children and in my case grandchildren were entering adulthood.
I was about to write my own comment, but it would have be redundant.
Oh please, you don’t have a clue what you are even reading. 😂. The Trump tax cuts prevented a crap ton of inversions (which is how US based headquarters become subsidiaries of their foreign entities and thus become foreign based taking jobs and tax dollars to corporation friendly countries like most of Western Europe).
Do you even know the average corporate tax rate for OECD countries? How much do you know about VAT taxes? Why do so many economist work for bug 4 accounting firms? Have you ever read a single transfer pricing report? Do you even know what that is? Do you realize US tax rates are already far more progressive than all of Western Europe? Do you realize Venezuela is the only country with a wealth tax above 0%, and they raised it in 2019, and Bernie’s tax and social programs was far more Venezuela than Scandinavia (hint, in Scandinavian countries they have low corporate taxes, high VAT taxes which are very regressive, and much flatter income taxes than the US).
That’s your wish, but it isn’t based in any objective fact. It’s up there with your claim “Clinton isn’t a Democrat.” Saying it over and over doesn’t make it true. It’s just some nonsense you tell yourself to avoid any acknowledgment of actual outcomes. Sad.
When you say Democrats are better for workers, which Democrat administration specifically are you referring to? Carter? Clinton? Obama? Biden? Are are these better Democrat administrations actual Democrat administrations, or just theoretical ones?
Your own post from joint committee shows, based on actual outcomes, the middle class proportionally benefitted more than the rich from the 2017 law change. Corporations are a conduit for economic activity, so it’s always funny when silly people pretend like corporations are an actual, literal person who “benefitted” unfairly from anything. Wages going up for those actual humans at the bottom more than those at the top was one of the outcomes. Oh, so was historically low unemployment, and inflation.
But you’re right, yet again under a good Democrat administration like Biden workers are totally doing better again..............oh wait............
Democrats are better for workers, period. It was the GOP that implemented trickle-down, supply side economic policies that redistributed wealth from the low and middle classes to the top. They implemented tax policies that promoted off-shoring. They deregulate in the false belief that the market will solve problems when the market creates them.
The Trump tax cuts for the rich threw scraps to the low and middle classes, to make it appear that the GOP cared for them too. The only reason that wages have gone up is due to the pandemic.
Also, I said that Clinton was not a progressive, he's more a libertarian, that New Democrat thing that is GOP lite.
"The Democrats outsourced the working class to China in the 1990’s, and for my entire adult life, whenever they are in power, labor suffers and wealth inequality grows."
Nonsense. It was libertarians, such as Milton Friedman, not Democrats that did this and the Republican Party is the party for libertarians. Libertarians argued for money to be allowed to move where it is most needed, that cheap consumer goods should be the goal therefore production should be allowed to locate where costs are lowest, etc.
Offshoring is a Republican Party issue (https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/is-the-woke-cultural-agenda-of-union/comments?s=r), not a Democratic Party issue. You are either a troll or just a knee-jerk anti-Democrat who chose to not look into an issue before posting. That the Republican Party is THE problem, look at votes for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that set the conditions that caused the subprime mortgage crisis:
Even in the house in which Democrats did vote for the Act, 26.5% of house Democrats did not support it while only 6.8% of house Republicans did not support it. Senate Democrats rejected it and it passed in the Senate on GOP votes exclusively. Clinton, a libertarian, signed it into law. Then there's the Trump tax cut for the rich that was also passed by Republican votes.
The Democrats are a problem in that they do not fight Republican policies against individual rights, by Republican conservatives, and Republican pro-wealthy policies, by Republican libertarians. The Democrats are far more pro-worker than any Republican as shown by the GOP's support of "right to work" laws in the states that they control.
OK, but Clinton did act end "welfare as we know it", signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley, was far more pro-business, etc. IMO, he and the New Democrats were more libertarian than progressives as they acted to reduce government in certain areas that previous Democratic presidents would not have.
Remarkably, that is correct. He put the seal on Carter's move to the Right, making the Dems just another big-business party: Republicans in a donkey suit. Not Libertarians, who at least have some integrity. Obama continued the trend.
Reducing government assistance to programs that workers need is a conservative move, not liberal. When called on that back in the '90s, Clinton referred to himself as a "conservative liberal." Go figure. The privatization/de-regulation policies of the '80s that Clinton took over and expanded during the '90s is a testament to how his breed of Democrat are actually Republicans in Democratic clothing. This is a tactic used to get progressives to support anti-worker policies that Republican presidents would suffer far more resistance for promoting.
"Reducing government assistance to programs that workers need is a conservative move, not liberal."
It's libertarian too. This is one of those issues that appeals to both certain liberals and conservatives. Clinton was far more liberal than conservative though, that New Democrat thing. I use the terms "conservative" and "liberal" as they were at the French Revolution, not the meaningless way they are used today, to mean anything that anyone wants. So, while libertarians believe in individual rights, inclusive democracy, equal opportunity, etc, their belief in "the market" rejects welfare for all but the worst cases.
That said, yes, the New Democrats, the "establishment" Democrats, are GOP lite.
I honestly can't see to what extent Clinton was liberal. His administration passed some strong conservative legislation such as the 1994 crime bill, the Welfare Reform bill to "end welfare as we know it," NAFTA, and a large amount of de-regulation policies. As for socially liberal, he was only as liberal as he needed to be for a politician in the '90s; he was for the Marriage Protection Act and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays in the military. That certainly sounds like Clinton and all the neoliberal Democrats controlling the DNC repudiating welfare for all but the worst cases. Let's not even talk about his tragic "workfare" scheme as part of the Welfare Reform Act purporting to get tough on welfare recipients, which was nothing more than a scam to give virtually free labor to companies.
I see where you're coming from in terms of definitions, but I do think I have stuck closely to a specific definition of Democrats and liberals as pro-labor in my argument that since the Clinton presidency the Democrats have done nothing for the workers.
Jeff has no clue what he’s talking about (as I’m sure you can tell). He also didn’t seem to read his link to the JCT report which shows those making over $1million recieved the smallest proportional tax benefit from the 2017 law change and the % of the federal taxes paid by that group increased as a percentage of total federal revenue. It also shows middle class families saved the most - which is exactly what the plan were aiming for along with gdp growth which was accomplished. 🤦♀️. I do so love when people like Jeff scream at me how wrong I am, then the only source document they post supports exactly what I said.
In any event, in case there is confusion about Trump’s tax policies, here are some links to actual tax policy experts, and some to equally bias non-experts as what Jeff posted. I’ll let the join committee post speak for itself on the individual tax side.
During the 2016 campaign I was working on a tax planning project to invert a U.S. based multinational headquarters into its European subsidiary. My job for years was to off shore profits via allocations for multinational corporations headquartered in the US. The day after Trump won those plans we’re scraped (the c-suite was counting on a Clinton win). But hey, I’m sure Jeff knows what he’s talking about better than those of us paid to understand the loopholes inside and out for a very good living. 🙄😂
Anywho, Trump prevented a lot of planned offshoring because it became an expensive exercise without much benefit because the US corporate tax rate became competitive with places like Western Europe. Most CPAs don’t understand global transfer pricing tax planning and allocations, and the same goes for the vast majority of the media, so it’s easy to find talking heads that don’t understand.
Anywho, if you are interested here are actual sources.
And if we are playing the “let’s compare interest group interpretations” with Jeff, thats easy (even though he thinks I should be censored, despite actually having expertise on the subject, but not him, despite his posting of “sources” on tax policy like NPR and Forbes articles on “feelings.”
Also, here's an indication about the complexity of certain issues that most of Glenn's posters are totally ignorant of because they do NOT research anything, they just go to their favorite conspiracy theory site:
What does Puerto Rico, and Clinton’s phasing out of 936 have to do with anything???? Puerto Rico’s fiscal problems are largely because it’s a welfare state with high taxes that they then offset with huge incentives to attract foreign investment while not really promoting internal development. It’s also very Caribbean in culture - and it’s very difficult to build wealth and long term business in any Caribbean country (Sandals has helped change that. RIP Butch). They are beautiful, and the people awesome, but there is a crap ton of corruption, and that includes lots of corruption in Puerto Rico.
Glad to see you’ve discovered Tax Foundation though. Happy reading!!!
Clinton is NOT the Democratic Party. Most Democrats voted against Gramm-Leach Bliley and against pro-offshoring legislation, such as the Trump tax cuts:
There will always be "fringe" players, such as the Republicans who voted against Gramm-Leach-Bliley or for bills that incentivize offshoring, but this is about the false accusation that NCmom made. This is THE problem on Glenn's site, people are allowed to post with no support, such as NCmom did. How can we have a valid discussion when false statements are more the rule than the exception? We can't.
Clinton is NOT "the Democratic Party"? The Clintons and other Democrats like them *rule* the Democratic Party, and the genuine progressives who stubbornly continue to remain Democrats are routinely debased and ignored. What they did to Bernie Sanders for two presidential campaigns in a row prove who actually runs that party.
Correct, he is not THE party as the voting record for Gram-Leach-Bliley shows and so does the voting record for Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996:
IMO, the problem is that the Democrats falsely believe that the American electorate is more "conservative" than it is because the GOP is more successful at communicating and dividing that the Democrats are. Therefore, the New Democrats, not progressives, have more power. That the American people appear swayed by GOP arguments forces the Democrats to act more GOP lite, to remain competitive.
You guys arguing that the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans just don't have any evidence to back it up as the voting patterns refute that argument. The Democrats are a problem because they don't fight for progressive causes because there are a few "New Democrats" that are more libertarian than progressive.
I can't agree with this, Jeff. All the Democrats ever do is talk the talk regarding worker issues -- that is, when they aren't pushing emotionally volatile identity politics that divide the working class demographics against each other. But when it comes to actually walking the walk on pro-worker economic issues, they do little to nothing or the exact opposite. As you yourself noted in passing, the Democrats, particularly the DNC, are filled with Libertarians and economic conservatives in sheep's clothing, saying one thing to garner progressive support but never fulfilling their pro-worker promises once in office. Frankly, essentially saying that the awful pro-business Democrats like Clinton, Obama, and Biden are "not Democrats at heart" is a cop-out, since it seems only these 'blue dog" Democrats ever get elected to the White House. Remember what they did to Bernie Sanders's genuinely progressive primary campaigns twice in a row? Did you notice this pattern? Supporting Democrats as friends of labor is nothing more than naivety at best and tribalism at its worst. Personally, I do not consider Democrats the "lesser evil" than Republicans since both support the same global system and one can make a good argument that a sly fox in sheep's clothing is a worse threat than the ravenous wolf that wears his coat proudly.
The problem is fundamental to each party's base and the GOP's is far more angry and ready to destroy all things liberal, whereas that of the Democratic Party, not so much. The GOP also understands how to divide us and the Democrats have not learned to deal with that and so they are always playing to what they see as a more "conservative" electorate to maintain some level of competition. IMO, the Democrats are just politically stupid and that makes them look worse than their voting record indicates.
So you are not only saying that the last three Team D presidents were marginal figures within their own party, you ignore how Team D has worked to marginalize presidential candidates who might actually espouse the policies you claim that Team D supports.
For that matter, what has Team D done when they had the presidency and both houses of Congress?
FWIW, Team R plays similar bait and switch games would its own social conservative wing.
I disagree. Clinton, Obama, Biden all screwed over the working and middle class and all 3 were factually Democrats, elected in the Democrat primary to represent the Democrat party in the presidential elections they won, where as President set trade policy and signed or vetoed laws. Whatever ideological camp you put them in, all 3 were who the majority of Democrats voted for in the primaries to be the Democrat party candidate for the Presidency they won, and direct Democrat policy, as Democrat presidents.
It was also Democrat housing equity policy that laid the foundation for the housing crises as much, if not more, than Graham-Leahey. Furthermore, the highest proportional benefit from the Trump tax cuts went to the middle class, not the wealthy, but I’m just a CPA with over 15 years of tax experience, I’m sure your totally more informed than me on the subject. 😂. Maybe it’s you who should read the actual data from both Tax Foundation and Tax a policy Center on who actually benefitted from the Trump tax cuts before regurgitating disproven left wing media narrative, or maybe you’re just happy to be a useful idiot for leftists (I mean, you did start the insulting pontificating, so I figure I’d return the favor 😉)
I’m also 39 and own two nice homes. My kids haven’t stepped foot in a public school. In reality, Biden has been fantastic for my wealth picture. I haven’t been handed anything but have worked hard, benefitted from gatekeeping since I purchased (and paid off) and undergrad and grad degree (as has my husband) and we can withstand the inflation price hikes far better than most of the people who actually voted for Biden. Under Biden, like most in our position, our wealth has shot up exponentially more than our bills. I get the financial benefits and none of the guilt because I didn’t vote for the 💩 show we are seeing yet again with a Dem in the Oval Office. Not wanting to “bomb bomb Iran” I voted for Obama, but carry huge guilt for it. This time watching the middle class get pointlessly hammered by over regulation and endless inflationary policies under Biden it’s nice not to have all that guilt inside.
I won’t vote for Democrats because I find Democrat policy outcomes at the moment to be very anti middle class, anti-labor. I have no idea in a decade or two. My political preferences have nothing to do with my personal identity.
Ideologically most of my adult life Democrats elect neocon/ neoliberals with insane domestic economic, social, and education policy, and those policies ARE most harming the poor, middle class.
I worked for what I have, and I don’t need Democrat policy produced hand ups at the expense of the middle class that is the backbone of this country I love. I also won’t engage in the nonsense the last 3 Democrat presidents aren’t really “Democrats” even though that’s who Democrats chose to represent the party.
When I realized the leftist policies I had supported from Democrats didn’t actually work, I admitted it to myself and changed the way I voted. Even in my days of voting almost entirely for Dems I remained grounded enough in reality to acknowledge it was WTO that mostly screwed the middle class and that was Clinton.
I’m not that tied to any political party. When I turned 18 I didn’t vote for Republicans because neocon war mongers set the policy for the party under Bush II. I was also heavily indoctrinated in undergrad and grad school. I didn’t yet realize bleeding heart liberal policies didn’t actually work. I’ve lived, I’ve learned, I’ve self-reflected, and I make better decisions. You should try that sometime.
These days I won’t vote for Democrats because neocon/ neoliberals are setting the policies for Democrats, and getting into debates about if they are “really” Democrats, or blaming congress for outcomes driven largely by ever increasing executive branch policies, or blaming republicans with a bunch of semantics gymnastics, isn’t based in objective reality and would demand I ignoring actual outcomes, which I personally am unwilling to do as actual outcomes are how I judge policies and politicians and political parties. Outcomes are what we all must live with.
Since you enjoy insults this is the last comment or response I will make to you. I don’t care who you vote for, odds are I’ll be just fine either way. Bye
LOL! You have nothing to back that up! You are a troll:
1. The CRA did not cause the subprime mortgage crisis as it is applied to the regulated banks (https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2010/q4/pdf/federal_reserve.pdf). The subprime mortgage crisis was due to speculation on Wall Street due to investment houses and deregulation that allowed the creation of all sorts of financial instruments built from mortgage backed securities. In fact, it was the existence of the unregulated credit default swaps that was the straw that broke the crisis wide open.
First, corporations still aren’t people. That’s a Mitt Romney theory that is objectively false. Second, your assertion that rich will benefit at the end is only true if the wealthy actually get their 2% deductions and SALT tax deductions back. No one is pushing to let the 2% deductions actually expire. Parties are even there. It appears to be many of the Dems itching to accelerate the return of uncapped SALT. Win to the R’s who oppose letting the cap expire.
How does that make Dems “better” for workers? Or worse for the rich?
Over the 10-year period, the highest proportional total benefit still goes to the middle class, even if the elimination of 2% deductions and SALT tax cap expire. Which they will if Dems stay in power.
I'm the daughter of a WWII veteran and widow of a combat veteran and also a teacher with a liberal history. I was belittled by a young union colleague for suggesting we commemorate Veterans at a campus event . I felt very sad.
I live in a right to work state. I've been a member of several unions and have never once seen local action to benefit employees. They do, however, make sure the slacker working nearby who can't show up on time, lollygags, abuses break times, etc., continues to be able to make their co-worker's lives more difficult. My first union was Teamsters. The rep showed up every Christmas to give everyone $40 and promise they were still working on those cool benefits. Never a change or improvement. I've watched unions strike/negotiate the jobs away (looking at Hostess here). Worst of all, when you get your "vote this way" mailers. You see leadership at parties and making endorsements and playing big-time maker and shaker. They don't need to work over the national politicians, they need to force the employer to the local table, period. The idea of unionizing entirely unskilled workers is silly too. If you do a job that anyone plucked at random off the street can do, your skill level gains no leverage. That's why Starbucks should be an interim/student/starter job and not a career. Same with fast food. Folks put a lot of time and effort into fighting for more money for no skill when they should dedicate that effort to acquiring more valuable skills. The promise of unions getting them $15 per hour at a national level is assured stagnation - they will wait for $15 rather than acquiring skills for $25. Not to mention the difference between $15 in the middle of nowhere and $15 in L.A.. Finally, there is no way in hell I'll give money to any group who sees social justice and woke ideology as the thing they are paid to do by their members.
A follow-up note. One fatal flaw for entry/student workers is the unwillingness or inability to properly package the skills they do acquire. I did this myself and helped my kids, friends and family. "I work at McDonald's" is not the same as "inventory management, customer relations, conflict resolution, training and mentoring experience, time management skills, detail oriented production, ..." - but they are the same job.
Definitely a plus for some unions (those who do it in skilled trades) with their training and accreditation - working the skill side rather than just the bargaining end.
I think private sector unions would be fine, if they prohibited dues to be used for lobbying.
I think public sector unions should be legislated out (fat chance) and are one of the principal reasons for runaway public spending, and gazzilions of dollars of un(der)funded pension funds.
Not a mention of how the open borders policy of the wokies and the Dems lets in millions of laborers and the downward pressure this puts on wages?? This point is always studiously avoided.
RIght to work laws are a good thing for union WORKERS (union LEADERS sometimes forget that the workers are as much a part of the union as they are). Without right-to-work laws, there's no check on their leader's ability to use union funds for political causes against the will of their members. Of course, the Democratic Party is 100% against right-to-work laws... a large percentage of their campaign funding comes from union LEADERS.
Another point... public employee unions are a DISASTER. FDR predicted it and it has come true. There are so many politicians owned lock, stock and barrel by public employee unions around the country... mostly, but not entirely, Democrats... that racketeering between governments and unions has become the standard in California (where I lived for 21 years). Both Republican and Democratic Governors got into racketeering with the corrections facility unions.
The trade unions in San Mateo County (where I lived) actually got an even better deal than Davis-Bacon... its municipalities are not merely requiring PLAs as an open quid-pro-quo for zoning approval, but the PLAs are requiring LOCAL union labor, not just prevailing wage labor, for PRIVATE construction projects. If the local unions are booked up, the project has to wait until they aren't. If that isn't unlawful, it should be. [AFAIK, they cannot override Davis-Bacon for a public project... and so prevailing wage labor may be brought in if needed.]
Look for the union label… or should I say “shirkers of the world, unite”? That is where the SEIU crashed the party. Every one of its bosses engaged in racketeering should be prosecuted under RICO. Racketeering by purchasing politicians is SOP for that union. So is ignoring the rules for Democratic Action laid down in the late 1940s and accepted by the CIO and AFL.
Ever see five guys standing around watching one guy dig a hole? Want more of that? Want to pay $8 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks? Let’s not pretend that those things aren’t going to happen. And here are some recent examples that make me skeptical of unionization.
Teachers union – kept kids at home and then in masks with no scientific basis
Police union – protects any and all “bad apples” that contribute to public mistrust
Longshoreman union – exaggerating the supply chain crisis by refusing to be flexible while earning multiples of average household income
With the unemployment rate below 4% and employers eager to attract workers with higher wages and better benefits, individuals have more negotiating power than ever and they should use it to their personal advantage.
Ever see one guy (that used to be two guys) trying to dig a hole...while he has eight layers of "management" over him (working from home, no doubt) berating him because he's not digging fast enough, expending all their energies on pushing paper, marking territory, snorkeling their "manager's" ass, reveling over the smell of their own farts, raking in ever-growing bonuses by stripping the hole-digging guy of his benefits, and working furiously to automate/outsource the digging of the hole? Yeah, I didn't think so.
The teacher's union was responsible for keeping kids at home? OFTLOG, get help.
People vote with their wallets and their feet. In my super woke CA town, the pre-Covid 35+ student class size in my grandkids’ K-6, has dropped to <20, as parents sent their kids to the local Catholic schools rather than make them stay at home. There’s one elementary school that’s highly rated and everybody tried to fudge their home addresses to get in. That school was very strict about making sure you actually lived in their school zone before letting you enroll your kids. Now they take ANYBODY without verifying your address because their enrollment has been cut in half. Parents may yet save the Republic.
The teachers unions ARE, based on historical records by union leaders and CDC and state/ federal agencies, largely responsible for the destruction of public school kids in the US. from idiotic school closures and mask mandates. This extends to pro-groomer curriculum, love of teaching neo-racism, and complete disregard for actual academics and knowledge based in objective reality.
Are my kids privileged? Heck yeah, because we work our butts off and sacrifice and pay money to ensure they attend a private school where the professionals care about their education and character development. Teachers unions have turned students in public schools into nothing more than a revenue stream for guaranteed income.
Should my kids feel guilty? Not a chance. We weren’t handed anything and the parents of the kids most harmed by Covid mitigation and pathetic academic standards are the kids of Democratic voters in deep blue cities where the literacy rates are the lowest and racial achievement gaps are the widest and growing. Its no wonder the literacy rate in CA is 10% BELOW WV.
It’s not my fault or my kids fault that people vote to sacrifice their own kids on the alter of woke teacher’s unions. I feel genuinely bad for the parents trapped in public schools who want better for their kids, which is why I support my tax dollars following the kid via school choice, not the teacher’s union.
That brings me to my other union example. I'm a boomer, to set the approximate time period. When I was in grade school and high school (both public) nearly all of my teachers were middle-aged or older. On the occasions (not really frequent or infrequent) when one of them expressed why he or she was a teacher, and/or why we students should consider it for a career, the reason nearly always centered on the satisfaction gained from broadening yound minds. But in my sophomore HS year, I was assigned to a young English teacher, who had recently graduated from state teachers' college. She heartily recomended it as a career, but for entirely different reasons. According to her, those were: good pay; easy work; regular hours with no overtime required; Summers off to either work another job, or loaf; and last, but not least, that the union made it nearly impossible for a teacher to be fired. There are undoubtedly many other factors, but I personally date the corruption of the US public education system from the day that I heard her express that opinion.
Don't forget the pension benefits, a retirement that private sector workers can only dream of. And all paid for by the taxpayers, voted on by politicians bought and paid for by teacher unions.
Government unions exist to raise taxes and reduce services, private sector unions exist to raise wages made off the worker's generated profits. With government there is no such thing as profit.
The teacher's union dictated covid policy to the CDC. They determined if and when schools would open and whether or not kids would have to wear masks. It was allowed to do this because it is one of the largest donors to Democrats. Union members don't have a say in how their dues are spent. This doesn't sound like a help to the workers, it sounds like corruption.
Typical liberal. When you cannot address the topic, they attack the person. Not laughing with you; just shaking my head. You've chosen ignorance over information.
Teachers in my country were all in huge favor of unlimited lockdowns and how any risk was too great to ever consider reopening (Guess who was getting their full salary for not doing any work)
There is a lot of truth to that. School districts did not want to have to sue their teachers' unions to get the unions to honor their contracts.
Even if the school districts won, suing your employees back to work is not necessarily always the surest route to a hardworking and satisfied teaching staff.
Sorry Batya, but outside of a few isolated examples the union value proposition is lacking. Unionizing just adds another "boss" to a worker's life - one that steals their money for political contributions over which the unionized worker has no say. Since 2010, 99% of political contributions from unions have gone to Democratic causes, even though half of union households vote Republican. It's not the 19th century, and employers at all levels are desperate for quality workers, and are very flexible about pay and benefits, consistent with staying in business, of course.
Two more specific points: as contributor AngelO points out nearby, how do you reconcile the union-funded Democratic Party's open border policy, which brings in millions of hardworking but unskilled people every year, with increased unionization? The second point is the corruption endemic to unions. From 2016-2018 alone, just 2 years, 143 union leaders admitted to crimes. If unions are so great, why do they have to beat people up routinely who oppose them? Why do (teachers) unions oppose school choice when the vast majority of all Americans want their kids to get a good education?
I do agree with one point, however - they protect their own. Whether it's bad teachers a school wants to fire, or bad cops a police chief wants to dismiss, the union is their to take care of "their people". If it wasn't for Democratic governments unionizing themselves and insisting on "prevailing (union) wage" contracts for all of their projects we pay for, they'd already be gone. Unless unions radically reform and become apolitical, they are toast, and that's not going to happen because they are really run by progressive Democrats.
"...employers at all levels are desperate for quality workers, and are very flexible about pay and benefits, consistent with staying in business, of course."
The company I work for, and have for the last 27 years, is a paltry shadow of its former self. Several buyouts and constant reorgs, beginning in the '90s, have resulted in thousands of employees being forced to take "separation" packages, "retiring" early, or quitting outright at the horrible, god-awful environment - including being fired for "insubordination" for refusing to work a 70-hour week, without proper compensation. I have born witness to the ongoing decimation of the benefits, from a contributory pension plan to nothing; hard caps on PTO rollover, complete elimination of relocation packages; and a continuing transfer of medical/dental costs to the employee; hiring unqualified "outsiders" to "manage" orgs, then leave a huge mess for the gray beards to clean up, etc, etc.
When asked why the company is continuing to engage in these destructive practices, while at the very same time whining ENDLESSLY about how "hard it is to hire qualified people, the answer is always the same:
"...to remain competitive"
If companies can't find, hire and retain "quality workers", it's their own damned fault, and it has nothing to do with labor unions...NOTHING!
I'm sorry for your experience and I don't doubt it for a minute. Sounds like you worked for a lousy company, and I'll bet they're struggling with those policies, if they are even in business.
So quit and go elsewhere - there are a lot of great companies out there for people who care about the quality of their work. I know, I ran one. We had every color, ethnicity and sexual identity. Workers reviewed their supervisors anonymously, and 360 degree reviews were standard. Every employee was offered equity - stock - well below fair value, and they could sell whenever they wanted. Compensation was transparent. We had fun gatherings designed by employees. We paid most (not all - we want people to understand the country they live in) health insurance and had a very generous 401(k) match. Employees set their own goals because they knew the company, our market, and what we needed to do. We also had profit-sharing. In good years, we paid extra bonuses. In bad years, senior management took any hit, and no one was ever laid off. We expected integrity and hard work. I know many other firms like ours in many different industries. In our case and many others, unions simply had no value to add.
In Canada, government issued credentials are also used as gate- keepers. The banking business has no room whatsoever for those who did not come up through the ranks in Canada… they wouldn’t have the right pieces of paper to be hired and can’t get them.
They claim to be fair to immigrants, but there aren’t many options if you do not fit into a niche where foreigners are even allowed… or lose your job in such a niche and fall hopelessly far behind native Canadians for any new openings.
But Union supporters love to depict themselves as some altruistic people (“fraternity” like this writer putting it) fighting for the worker against the powerful capitalist.
In reality the main and first function of the union is to build a wall around the profession and make it hard for ordinary people to get into it. Otherwise they will have no leverage over business-owners whatsoever.
And of course they will claim all this licensing is to ensure quality but we all know what it really is.
Guilds are not all bad, but they do increase the cost of what they are guilding. The question is are they providing a superior product and thus is the added protection warranted...
I am very sympathetic to workers but dislike left wing unions. Real wages increased under Trump. Controlling the border and immigration helps American workers. Very worried what “Universal health care” would look like considering the same group runs the DMV.
To mention SEIU and IBEW in the same paragraph succinctly describes the wide spectrum of unions. SEIU is a Marxist organization that only serves the Democrat political machine by providing money and delusional rubes to destroy our great nation. IBEW serves the needs of its members while getting the job done. Diamonds vs Dogshit. Yes, it's that simple.
Good article, but I've got to push back on the assertion that we need Universal healthcare. The disaster of the past two years solidified in my mind that the government should not be involved in healthcare because it will ultimately be used to control people. Since, at least in the US, big Pharma rules the roost, the care and "help" that they would give us would only be to improve pharma profits and not be for our health. The example is the aggressive force used now to prevent open discussion of different treatments for COVID and to prevent doctors from making independent decisions doesn't bode well for centralized control.
Good points Laura! The censorship of scientific debate by the marriage ofbig pharma and the government is disastrous, beyond the fact that big government run programs are so inefficient, wasteful, and many times corrupt. These past two years were eye opening!
As a teacher, and belonging to a union, well, thank God. Not only is there a good pension, but health benefits that would cost me a small fortune if I were not a member. There would be all manner of inequities if there was no union since the Board of Education could really take advantage, and in the past I heard they would fire teachers quite easily, over nothing, and sometimes forgot to pay them for a day or a week's, or month's work. Unions are a good thing, well the teacher's union is. The big negative is that whether your a good teacher, or a bad teacher you are covered, and some teachers really suck, but they manage to stick around for years and walk away with a very good pension they never earned. No matter the negatives I support unions. They do call dutifully to tell me to vote for democrats, but now a days I just don't listen because democrats ain't what they use to be, and haven't been for a very long time.
Before unions teachers were making little money with a college degree and treated poorly by the Board of Ed. They're not perfect, but better with them then without them. I don't disagree with what you said.
The Democrats outsourced the working class to China in the 1990’s, and for my entire adult life, whenever they are in power, labor suffers and wealth inequality grows.
The Democrats might talk about Union issues, but in the end they promote the very policies that destroy the US middle class. Workers have a better chance of being heard by populist Republicans than Democrats that are more interested in giving men a civil right to all female private spaces, and destroying the supply chain (and with it jobs), than about factor workers or blue collar workers anywhere. Democrats wouldn’t have outsourced the middle class and shut down factories from coast to coast if they actually cared about union workers.
Team D is but the political expression of the class power of the PMC, with a few crumbs tossed to minorities. In a similar vein, Team R is but the political expression of the class power of the local gentry, with a few crumbs tossed to evangelicals and poorer whites.
Once you view contemporary US politics in this context, all will be revealed.
I had high hopes for this piece, but was ultimately disappointed.
Democrats' woke "Abolish ICE" agenda, one that is endorsed by people like the leader of SEIU, is the elephant in the room. You can be pro-open borders or pro-labor, but you can't be both.
Yet Democrat pols are out there loudly countering opposition to their globalist agenda by accusing detractors of xenophobia. Why is the "party of labor" facilitating the importation of cheap surplus labor? And why are we letting them getting away with that?
I should have added that when the average frustrated PMC yuppie hears "more immigrants", that yuppie thinks "Oh, goodie! Ethnic restaurants and cheaper cleaners and au pairs!"
When the average blue collar worker hears "more immigrants", that worker thinks "less jobs, less money, longer lines."
I am generally all for immigration and immigrants, but let's not pretend that they affect everyone equally.
I am generally against immigration so long as there is less than full employment. The the law of supply and demand is a thing, and citizenship should be too.
That's why low wage Americans, women and minorities saw 2/3 of the wage gains from 2017-2019 went to them.
Shut down the border (or take it more seriously) and you create demand from employers to actually hire low skilled low educated people who are American citizens often giving them their first shot at a real job.
Which is now gone. I understand there are another 1.5 million heading to the border right now and outside of TX and AZ Governors doing what they're doing with their Mexican Governor counterparts....it's going to be tough sledding for poorly educated low skilled workers in our urban cities.
Thank God they then have Democrats who will pull out their taxpayer checkbook for more welfare benefits provided they vote D in November.
thanks to widespread, unchecked discrimination, low paying jobs are not just for low-skilled, low-education workers. I have met more Black American college-educated store clerks, delivery clerks, entry-level customer service reps, etc. Full disclosure, : I am ridiculously underemployed, with a graduate professional degree.
I guess you are too young to recall, or have forgotten, the havoc wreaked on the US auto industry because the UAW created massive production inefficiencies and had tied management's hands to the point that it could not compete at all with the Japanese. In the early 1970's I worked with an itinerant from Michigan on an amusement pier, This clown had previously been a UAW employee at GM, until he got bored and decided to wander around the country. He bragged about how he and his coworkers used to evade work all day, get drunk on the job, and sabotage cars by such amusing pranks as putting an empty beer bottle inside a door panel to cause a severe rattle when the car was driven over bumpy roads. So, you are against immigration until all of the native-born assholes like him have lucrative jobs?
https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/0*FPut0Yhne6Kozd4l.
Well put ! I too remember those huge errors by UAW. Now, the Japanese produce the majority of personal autos in the USA. With the South Koreans catching up quickly.
Look at how short sighted the public teacher's unions have been lately. They milked C-19 for everything they could and then some. Overpaid and under worked. Public schools will start losing ground very soon and very fast. The next revolution: eliminating the Marxists from higher education system. They are going broke from being Woke!
I think those stories are true, but rare.
I worked 4 summers at a soybean processing plant that was union and as a summer fill-in, I was the only non union employee allowed to work inside the plant.
I watched union guys scream at Supervisors who were merely turning a wrench to shut off a valve before our main boiler blew up...then staged a one day walkout threatening to file a grievance because the Plant Superintendent ( a former Union Steward) refused to testify. Boy was I busy during that 24 hours sprinting from job to job to job
But you are right...far too often the first conversation while punching in was "where are we going to hide today."
I wanted nothing to do with it but I sympathized with these guys with barely a 10th grade education whose only opportunity in life was this plant processing soybeans 24 hours a day 365 days a week until they got to age 65. If that had been me, I would have taken the manlift to the top of the grain elevator and launched myself off the side.
There are takers in any union, but I do believe that is less than 5% of the union population who has such a sour attitude about their work and a defeatist attitude about their own opportuniities.
They used to whisper in my ear "Hey college boy..you should quit college and stay here..youi'll never make this much money."
Just did my taxes this week and I paid more in state income taxes alone than I would have ever made in 1 full year work at the soybean processing plant.
So let me get this straight Sammy ,one guy told you some stories and you think that represents every American citizen ever born. little far out there buddy, I think it's called bigotry you're an ignorant individual you use a lot of large words but obviously you don't have a clue what most of them mean. you may want to check yourself there sammy . just saying you seem like an absolute moron I'm sure you're a pleasure to be around And have many friends who enjoy your company immensely or you just sit in mommy's basement and post I'm thinking the later
I should add: immigration has always been about replacing native workers. The "average [non-Black American] blue collar worker" you speak of is descended from immigrants who were recruited to replace slave labor both in Northern factories and in Southern cotton fields.
Neither they, nor their descendants had any problem with immigration so long as their jobs (and not incidentally, their social standing relative to Blacks) were secure. But now that Capital is looking to replace them, via unregulated illegal immigration at the bottom of the wage scale and h1B visas at the top, white workers are starting to see it as a problem.
This is just one of the myriad ways that white supremacy (the kind with country club membership and beautiful manners) has fucked over the white working class. Aren't you guys tired of it?
"white supremacy" - without a trigger warning! Oh my. Can't see race has much to do with the fact that we are a majority white nation derived from western European stock and therefore some became rich. Rich minorities, yes there are some, also find ways to make more money.
" majority white nation derived from western European stock and therefore some became rich"
If this is not sarcasm, get the fuck out of here.
"Some became rich" through systemic kidnapping, rape, torture, and oh yeah, wage theft perpetrated on millions of victims over the course of 250 years. And all of it was sanctioned by the US govt under the auspices of the singularly brutal system of chattel slavery; a system that only some Western Europeans have ever been sadistic and barbaric enough to practice.
As for "rich minorities," say American descendants of slavery if that's what you mean. We - not Hispanics (an invented group by the way), Asians, the Irish, nor even Native Americans, who also enslaved us - are the only group whose labor was legally stolen, and who were denied the trillions in government handouts that we designed to, and literally did MAKE the white middle and much of the upper classes.
White "success", just like Black "failure," is 95% government manufactured.
But don't take my word for it. Go read "When Affirmative Action Was White." It will disabuse you of your laughably false and self-serving idea that you're more clever, inventive, hardworking, or deserving than we are. Your real superpower is your tendency towards brutality and larceny, and shamelessness.
"mmigration has always been about replacing native workers." Including, of course, the Mayflower, and all that.
I guess religious freedom is being overlooked....
I'm not sure what you mean.
By "workers," I mean employees; people whose work makes profits for someone else. As far as I know, the Native Americans weren't kicking up to anyone. They were just living life, with notions of private property famously bore no resemblance to Europeans'.
The "noble savage" myth is a myth.
"Northern factory workers" were white, one immigration wave battling the previous wave from the start of mass immigration in the 1870's. The "great migration" of black Americans to the North didn't start until the First World War boom and massive labor shortages, Ford being one of the early champions of employing blacks. The second great migration North was during WW2 when sharecropping collapsed. Basic history.
You know nothing of history.
And who said anything about the Great Migration? Millions of emancipated slaves got the hell out of Dodge and made their way to Northern and Western cities immediately after slavery ended. Millions more followed when Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow began.
Edited to add: The Great Migrations (plural) came later.
Read a book or two. Start with "How the Irish Became White".
what is PMC ?
Professional Managerial Class
In order to be PMC, does one need to be a professional and in management, or would being a worker who is a professional qualify. This question, is not me being sarcastic , I just want to see if I was considered in the PMC. I was a physical therapist who got paid very well, mostly because there was a P.T. labor shortage for nearly 40 years
Labor unions are but a Team D organization tool, but , like most tools, they have little influence on the master other than what is and isn't feasible to do with a hammer or whatever.
I can answer that.
Unions draw dues from the # of members, not how much they are paid.
So they want 2 million new illegal immigrants coming over per year because eventually they'll join on to a meatpacking plant where they come through a Temp agency with no credentials...but they have a union card.
E-Verify for every single employer with a DUNS # in the USA is the only way to stop this exploitation of cheap slave-like labor.
It's why Sanctuary Cities exist. Those bar and restaurant owners don't want nobody poking around in the kitchen asking about immigration status. If they did, the kitchen would be cleared out in 10 minutes.
It's never been about labor, it's about power. It pains me to say this but in SoCal Hispanics unlike those communities in Texas and Florida behave like sheep following those pushing a unapologetic Marxist view of the world. Their inability to assimilate is tragic and while they enjoy and benefit from everything America offer's relative to opportunity they still have one foot firmly in the destructive relationship South of the border. They rarely question authority.
"It's never been about labor, it's about power"
As if they were mutually exclusive. Cheap labor is about money is about power. The traitors in the south did not rebel bcuz they wanted power over slaves. They rebelled bcuz they wanted to steal the fruits of slave labor. Those ill-gotten profits gave them power.
“You can be pro-open borders or pro-labor, but you can't be both.” Wrong.
What a scintillating and persuasive argument! I'm done with you.
you hit the nail on the head
The Finster aims to please.
LOL! You guys are either so ignorant or Republican trolls. See my post above.
Don’t forget the fact that organized labor is 100% behind socialized medicine. I am a 23 year union member myself that has wrestled with quitting the last 10 years. Socialized medicine will be just another burden on the union man. We will shoulder much of the cost thru our payroll taxes. I understand why the union bosses want it, it’s one less thing they would have to bargain with the company for come contract negotiations, but the membership is mislead if they think some crappy government health care system, paid for by union men will benefit us at all.
Good to point out workers have a better chance with populist Republicans, but those are still a small minority of the party. Establishment Republicans (most of them) are as damaging to the working class as the Democrat party.
This is well said, but we have to start somewhere. Even if it’s just a few Congress critters, it can grow.
I would also say that team R guys never acted like they were friends, while team D pretends all the time to be workers friends.
They need to be the majority and we should use primaries to do that.
Isn't it both interesting and ironic that thanks to their divisive anti-male identity politics, the Democrats have helped created a situation where the surest way for men to acquire exceptional minority treatment and find their way into safe/private spaces previously forbidden to them is to claim that they are actually women and identify as trans? I'm not saying that genuine gender dysmorphia does not exist, but the past decade has seen the emergence of the political trans and non-binary identitarian, the result of politics and trendy socialization rather than a quirk of neuro-biology.
Mass formation psychosis
Most of the ModernLeft thinks of good unions when they think of the State, County and City employees who are part of SEIU working in office jobs.
Once the hands get dirty, the ModernLeft scrunches up their forehead and raise their noses.
TL;DR: a "good" union is more closely aligned with the PMC.
ITA! The Nefarious Triad, know as the Clintons, was able to get NAFTA passed.
I think you have to recognize at one time democrats were very pro union, back in the day, before Carter, or some time thereafter. Now the democrats are little different from the republicans in this regard. I still get the phone calls telling to vote for democrats and I just ignore them.
I recognize this is how it used to be, but also the way it is today is that Democrats are no friends to labor. Maybe they prop up individual unions for a few years here and there, but only until the plant gets outsourced, and only after mass immigration of cheap labor has suppressed wages universally (including union wages).
You saw a real shift in that party after Clinton, but it was moving in that direction decades before. They totally turned me off during the Trump years with their lying and scheming and maybe it was all about getting back to Ukraine so they could finish what they started. God help us!
Carter was the stalking horse of the Tri-lateral Commission and David Rockefeller. What Reagan economically is blamed for he began.
Agreed. And one thing of importance you hit on here, NCmom, is how the Democrats currently hold identity politics in higher regard than economic issues that affect all workers, no matter their identity. This emotionally manipulative distraction from core worker issues detracts from needed class solidarity and instead divides us against each other, so that the system that is exploiting us gets a free pass. As much as the identitarians may give some lip service to hating capitalism, they are loved by capitalists in the DNC and Silicon Valley for good reason, and they sure do benefit from the support of capitalist media (both social and legacy) and company HR departments. They are among the best friends among the working class that the capitalists currently have, and the 1% has no illusions about this.
So Republicans, the party of Big Business, are going to give up those yummy business dollars to support a merely popular program? Pull the other one.
The Green Party is the only national party that consistently supports universal health care.
What makes you think universal healthcare is an improvement? I support the right to unionize but I’ll fight government run healthcare very hard because I want actual healthcare, not forced big pharma subscription plans using my own tax dollars.
I used to think we needed universal healthcare. I never had insurance in my entire adult life, so I learned to take responsibility for my own health. When I approached Medicare age, I was bombarded with offers for prescription benefits. When I told the representatives that I don't take any prescriptions, they were stunned! I have spent more in two years on Medicare premiums than I have spent my entire life on health care. The covid madness has further confirmed my belief that universal "healthcare" has little to do with actual care.
Big government mandated programs of any type only open the door for abuse and manipulation by those with agendas. We are supposed to be skeptical of government power and question those who hold that power...instead far too many jump at the chance to surrender their power as an individual to an agency or department in DC.
I agree. I don’t support government employee unions unless they are limited in scope and are banned from political endorsements or activity. They can only act for things that directly connect to the job and are non-political . It’s not taxpayer’s responsibility to fund unions for other people. I support the right of people in the private sector to unionize, though I think what mostly happens is union employees get paid slightly better right up until the bosses are bought off by politicians or their jobs outsourced all together.
Team D, on the other hand, gives us a bait-and-switch that turns out to be a gigantic subsidy for the insurance industry.
And big pharma
It blows my mind seeing Jimmy dore wide awake on how horrible the government has bungled everything related to covid, and still says if we had Medicare for all that we could have saved so many more lives.
One of my main takeaways from covid is how awful universal healthcare would be. Modern day government can't run anything competently, and they are getting progressively worse.
We don't have universal health care, so your logic is, well, unclear.
The logic is unclear maybe if you think they have been handling covid well? But if you disagree with how they handled covid shots, early treatment, and treatments like remdesevir and ventilators, the idea of letting them run healthcare even more than they do now should scare you.
Great response! Please add the CDC/NIH IGNORING natural immunity! The biggest farce by Fauci et al. Comrade Charles from the Soviet Republic of Oregon is easily confused by thoughtful comments.
You have a point - government malfeasance would be a potential problem. Bear in mind, however, that medical practice would remain mostly private; government would just be the insurance company, like Medicare (but hopefully improved).
The big failures were in PUBLIC health, which is distinct from treatment and is mostly government now. Unfortunately, it had been cut to the bone - by both parties - well before Covid hit. Worse, it was severely politicized, arguably a crime against humanity. I think the Dems were the main culprits, but nobody was innocent. With luck, these huge pandemics only happen every hundred years or so, like this one vs. the 1918 flu, so there's plenty of time to forget what works and what it was like.
Ironically, Covid demonstrated that universal health care was feasible, because the government set out to pay for everything - just like in a public system. That part went OK, even though treatment and prevention both were misinformed - and it was used as a pretest for massive censorship.
I agree the government did a terrible job handling covid, but they did that with our current private insurance system. And I would argue the private insurance system is part of the reason it was handled so poorly. Our politicians are basically captured by the private insurance and pharma companies, and a Medicare for all system would take some power away from those companies. So I guess I agree with Jimmy Dore on this, I think Medicare for all would improve the government's handling of things like covid, or at least not really affect it much one way or the other.
Even if you can take out the private insurers, big pharma and its army of lobbyists remains the elephant in the room. They already get more than their money’s worth, with politicians, the FDA and CDC marketing the shots more aggressively than even the pharma companies will risk.
I've been in government run health care, trust me it isn't as good as it sounds
As usual NCmom you have a talent for accurately summarizing what has happened to our society as our children and in my case grandchildren were entering adulthood.
I was about to write my own comment, but it would have be redundant.
More about the GOP and its anti-American worker policies: https://itep.org/trump-gop-tax-law-encourages-companies-to-move-jobs-offshore-and-new-tax-cuts-wont-change-that/
Oh please, you don’t have a clue what you are even reading. 😂. The Trump tax cuts prevented a crap ton of inversions (which is how US based headquarters become subsidiaries of their foreign entities and thus become foreign based taking jobs and tax dollars to corporation friendly countries like most of Western Europe).
Do you even know the average corporate tax rate for OECD countries? How much do you know about VAT taxes? Why do so many economist work for bug 4 accounting firms? Have you ever read a single transfer pricing report? Do you even know what that is? Do you realize US tax rates are already far more progressive than all of Western Europe? Do you realize Venezuela is the only country with a wealth tax above 0%, and they raised it in 2019, and Bernie’s tax and social programs was far more Venezuela than Scandinavia (hint, in Scandinavian countries they have low corporate taxes, high VAT taxes which are very regressive, and much flatter income taxes than the US).
https://taxfoundation.org/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-offshoring/
The fact is that the Trump tax cuts benefit the rich and corporations over the middle and lower classes.
That’s your wish, but it isn’t based in any objective fact. It’s up there with your claim “Clinton isn’t a Democrat.” Saying it over and over doesn’t make it true. It’s just some nonsense you tell yourself to avoid any acknowledgment of actual outcomes. Sad.
When you say Democrats are better for workers, which Democrat administration specifically are you referring to? Carter? Clinton? Obama? Biden? Are are these better Democrat administrations actual Democrat administrations, or just theoretical ones?
Your own post from joint committee shows, based on actual outcomes, the middle class proportionally benefitted more than the rich from the 2017 law change. Corporations are a conduit for economic activity, so it’s always funny when silly people pretend like corporations are an actual, literal person who “benefitted” unfairly from anything. Wages going up for those actual humans at the bottom more than those at the top was one of the outcomes. Oh, so was historically low unemployment, and inflation.
But you’re right, yet again under a good Democrat administration like Biden workers are totally doing better again..............oh wait............
Democrats are better for workers, period. It was the GOP that implemented trickle-down, supply side economic policies that redistributed wealth from the low and middle classes to the top. They implemented tax policies that promoted off-shoring. They deregulate in the false belief that the market will solve problems when the market creates them.
The Trump tax cuts for the rich threw scraps to the low and middle classes, to make it appear that the GOP cared for them too. The only reason that wages have gone up is due to the pandemic.
Also, I said that Clinton was not a progressive, he's more a libertarian, that New Democrat thing that is GOP lite.
"The Democrats outsourced the working class to China in the 1990’s, and for my entire adult life, whenever they are in power, labor suffers and wealth inequality grows."
Nonsense. It was libertarians, such as Milton Friedman, not Democrats that did this and the Republican Party is the party for libertarians. Libertarians argued for money to be allowed to move where it is most needed, that cheap consumer goods should be the goal therefore production should be allowed to locate where costs are lowest, etc.
Offshoring is a Republican Party issue (https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/is-the-woke-cultural-agenda-of-union/comments?s=r), not a Democratic Party issue. You are either a troll or just a knee-jerk anti-Democrat who chose to not look into an issue before posting. That the Republican Party is THE problem, look at votes for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that set the conditions that caused the subprime mortgage crisis:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/s105
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/106-1999/h570
Even in the house in which Democrats did vote for the Act, 26.5% of house Democrats did not support it while only 6.8% of house Republicans did not support it. Senate Democrats rejected it and it passed in the Senate on GOP votes exclusively. Clinton, a libertarian, signed it into law. Then there's the Trump tax cut for the rich that was also passed by Republican votes.
The Democrats are a problem in that they do not fight Republican policies against individual rights, by Republican conservatives, and Republican pro-wealthy policies, by Republican libertarians. The Democrats are far more pro-worker than any Republican as shown by the GOP's support of "right to work" laws in the states that they control.
Bill Clinton was a Libertarian? Knock me over with a feather!
I call BS.
OK, but Clinton did act end "welfare as we know it", signed Gramm-Leach-Bliley, was far more pro-business, etc. IMO, he and the New Democrats were more libertarian than progressives as they acted to reduce government in certain areas that previous Democratic presidents would not have.
Remarkably, that is correct. He put the seal on Carter's move to the Right, making the Dems just another big-business party: Republicans in a donkey suit. Not Libertarians, who at least have some integrity. Obama continued the trend.
Reducing government assistance to programs that workers need is a conservative move, not liberal. When called on that back in the '90s, Clinton referred to himself as a "conservative liberal." Go figure. The privatization/de-regulation policies of the '80s that Clinton took over and expanded during the '90s is a testament to how his breed of Democrat are actually Republicans in Democratic clothing. This is a tactic used to get progressives to support anti-worker policies that Republican presidents would suffer far more resistance for promoting.
"Reducing government assistance to programs that workers need is a conservative move, not liberal."
It's libertarian too. This is one of those issues that appeals to both certain liberals and conservatives. Clinton was far more liberal than conservative though, that New Democrat thing. I use the terms "conservative" and "liberal" as they were at the French Revolution, not the meaningless way they are used today, to mean anything that anyone wants. So, while libertarians believe in individual rights, inclusive democracy, equal opportunity, etc, their belief in "the market" rejects welfare for all but the worst cases.
That said, yes, the New Democrats, the "establishment" Democrats, are GOP lite.
I honestly can't see to what extent Clinton was liberal. His administration passed some strong conservative legislation such as the 1994 crime bill, the Welfare Reform bill to "end welfare as we know it," NAFTA, and a large amount of de-regulation policies. As for socially liberal, he was only as liberal as he needed to be for a politician in the '90s; he was for the Marriage Protection Act and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays in the military. That certainly sounds like Clinton and all the neoliberal Democrats controlling the DNC repudiating welfare for all but the worst cases. Let's not even talk about his tragic "workfare" scheme as part of the Welfare Reform Act purporting to get tough on welfare recipients, which was nothing more than a scam to give virtually free labor to companies.
I see where you're coming from in terms of definitions, but I do think I have stuck closely to a specific definition of Democrats and liberals as pro-labor in my argument that since the Clinton presidency the Democrats have done nothing for the workers.
So Clinton never pushed for WTO membership for China? And Mean Republicans made him sign NAFTA?
Obama sure fought hard against the TPP? He did say something about a picket line and comfy shoes, but did he ever walk the walk, so to speak?
Jeff has no clue what he’s talking about (as I’m sure you can tell). He also didn’t seem to read his link to the JCT report which shows those making over $1million recieved the smallest proportional tax benefit from the 2017 law change and the % of the federal taxes paid by that group increased as a percentage of total federal revenue. It also shows middle class families saved the most - which is exactly what the plan were aiming for along with gdp growth which was accomplished. 🤦♀️. I do so love when people like Jeff scream at me how wrong I am, then the only source document they post supports exactly what I said.
In any event, in case there is confusion about Trump’s tax policies, here are some links to actual tax policy experts, and some to equally bias non-experts as what Jeff posted. I’ll let the join committee post speak for itself on the individual tax side.
During the 2016 campaign I was working on a tax planning project to invert a U.S. based multinational headquarters into its European subsidiary. My job for years was to off shore profits via allocations for multinational corporations headquartered in the US. The day after Trump won those plans we’re scraped (the c-suite was counting on a Clinton win). But hey, I’m sure Jeff knows what he’s talking about better than those of us paid to understand the loopholes inside and out for a very good living. 🙄😂
Anywho, Trump prevented a lot of planned offshoring because it became an expensive exercise without much benefit because the US corporate tax rate became competitive with places like Western Europe. Most CPAs don’t understand global transfer pricing tax planning and allocations, and the same goes for the vast majority of the media, so it’s easy to find talking heads that don’t understand.
Anywho, if you are interested here are actual sources.
On offshoring accusations:
https://taxfoundation.org/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-offshoring/
Resources to understand full impacts of 2017 tax law changes
https://taxfoundation.org/tax-reform-explained-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/
And if we are playing the “let’s compare interest group interpretations” with Jeff, thats easy (even though he thinks I should be censored, despite actually having expertise on the subject, but not him, despite his posting of “sources” on tax policy like NPR and Forbes articles on “feelings.”
https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/trumps-tax-cuts-worked-tax-hikes-now-will-kneecap-economic-recovery-covid-19
Also, here's an indication about the complexity of certain issues that most of Glenn's posters are totally ignorant of because they do NOT research anything, they just go to their favorite conspiracy theory site:
https://taxfoundation.org/tax-policy-helped-create-puerto-rico-fiscal-crisis/
Note that Clinton phased out something that most Americans believed allowed corporations to avoid paying taxes.
You know nothing about Puerto Rican tax policy. 😂. You only discovered Tax Foubdation existed today. 😂😂😂
Obviously, I do.
No you don’t. But it’s funny watching you pretend.
What does Puerto Rico, and Clinton’s phasing out of 936 have to do with anything???? Puerto Rico’s fiscal problems are largely because it’s a welfare state with high taxes that they then offset with huge incentives to attract foreign investment while not really promoting internal development. It’s also very Caribbean in culture - and it’s very difficult to build wealth and long term business in any Caribbean country (Sandals has helped change that. RIP Butch). They are beautiful, and the people awesome, but there is a crap ton of corruption, and that includes lots of corruption in Puerto Rico.
Glad to see you’ve discovered Tax Foundation though. Happy reading!!!
Read my post again to answer your question.
You know nothing about international tax policy........ especially in Puerto Rico
Clinton is NOT the Democratic Party. Most Democrats voted against Gramm-Leach Bliley and against pro-offshoring legislation, such as the Trump tax cuts:
https://itep.org/trump-gop-tax-law-encourages-companies-to-move-jobs-offshore-and-new-tax-cuts-wont-change-that/
There will always be "fringe" players, such as the Republicans who voted against Gramm-Leach-Bliley or for bills that incentivize offshoring, but this is about the false accusation that NCmom made. This is THE problem on Glenn's site, people are allowed to post with no support, such as NCmom did. How can we have a valid discussion when false statements are more the rule than the exception? We can't.
Clinton is NOT "the Democratic Party"? The Clintons and other Democrats like them *rule* the Democratic Party, and the genuine progressives who stubbornly continue to remain Democrats are routinely debased and ignored. What they did to Bernie Sanders for two presidential campaigns in a row prove who actually runs that party.
"Clinton is NOT "the Democratic Party""
Correct, he is not THE party as the voting record for Gram-Leach-Bliley shows and so does the voting record for Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/104-1996/s262
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/104-1996/h383
IMO, the problem is that the Democrats falsely believe that the American electorate is more "conservative" than it is because the GOP is more successful at communicating and dividing that the Democrats are. Therefore, the New Democrats, not progressives, have more power. That the American people appear swayed by GOP arguments forces the Democrats to act more GOP lite, to remain competitive.
Clinton and Obama are "fringe" players. Go on, pull the other one.
And remind me how Team D repealed the Bush-era tax cuts when they had a filibuster proof majority in 2009. Oh wait, they didn't.
The Democrats are better for workers than the Republicans as I've shown:
https://money.cnn.com/2003/09/25/news/economy/debate/index.htm
You guys arguing that the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans just don't have any evidence to back it up as the voting patterns refute that argument. The Democrats are a problem because they don't fight for progressive causes because there are a few "New Democrats" that are more libertarian than progressive.
You are arguing with points I didn't make, although it seems that you can be bought off with symbolic gestures and half-measures.
I can't agree with this, Jeff. All the Democrats ever do is talk the talk regarding worker issues -- that is, when they aren't pushing emotionally volatile identity politics that divide the working class demographics against each other. But when it comes to actually walking the walk on pro-worker economic issues, they do little to nothing or the exact opposite. As you yourself noted in passing, the Democrats, particularly the DNC, are filled with Libertarians and economic conservatives in sheep's clothing, saying one thing to garner progressive support but never fulfilling their pro-worker promises once in office. Frankly, essentially saying that the awful pro-business Democrats like Clinton, Obama, and Biden are "not Democrats at heart" is a cop-out, since it seems only these 'blue dog" Democrats ever get elected to the White House. Remember what they did to Bernie Sanders's genuinely progressive primary campaigns twice in a row? Did you notice this pattern? Supporting Democrats as friends of labor is nothing more than naivety at best and tribalism at its worst. Personally, I do not consider Democrats the "lesser evil" than Republicans since both support the same global system and one can make a good argument that a sly fox in sheep's clothing is a worse threat than the ravenous wolf that wears his coat proudly.
To be fair, I would say that neither Team R nor Team D are libertarians.
Both favor crony capitalism, albeit in favor of different but overlapping sets of cronies.
I'm arguing that the Democrats did not support tax policies that made offshoring attractive, trickle-down economic policies, deregulation, right to work policies, etc, to any where near the extent that the GOP did or does. Look at the voting records on those bills and you'll see that it's just a fact that Democrats support the average working American more than the GOP but has not succeeded as much as hoped due to GOP obstructionism, made a GOP policy by Newt Gingrich (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/) and Mitch McConnell (https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-grim-reaper-395-house-bills-senate-wont-pass-1487401).
The problem is fundamental to each party's base and the GOP's is far more angry and ready to destroy all things liberal, whereas that of the Democratic Party, not so much. The GOP also understands how to divide us and the Democrats have not learned to deal with that and so they are always playing to what they see as a more "conservative" electorate to maintain some level of competition. IMO, the Democrats are just politically stupid and that makes them look worse than their voting record indicates.
So you are not only saying that the last three Team D presidents were marginal figures within their own party, you ignore how Team D has worked to marginalize presidential candidates who might actually espouse the policies you claim that Team D supports.
For that matter, what has Team D done when they had the presidency and both houses of Congress?
FWIW, Team R plays similar bait and switch games would its own social conservative wing.
I disagree. Clinton, Obama, Biden all screwed over the working and middle class and all 3 were factually Democrats, elected in the Democrat primary to represent the Democrat party in the presidential elections they won, where as President set trade policy and signed or vetoed laws. Whatever ideological camp you put them in, all 3 were who the majority of Democrats voted for in the primaries to be the Democrat party candidate for the Presidency they won, and direct Democrat policy, as Democrat presidents.
It was also Democrat housing equity policy that laid the foundation for the housing crises as much, if not more, than Graham-Leahey. Furthermore, the highest proportional benefit from the Trump tax cuts went to the middle class, not the wealthy, but I’m just a CPA with over 15 years of tax experience, I’m sure your totally more informed than me on the subject. 😂. Maybe it’s you who should read the actual data from both Tax Foundation and Tax a policy Center on who actually benefitted from the Trump tax cuts before regurgitating disproven left wing media narrative, or maybe you’re just happy to be a useful idiot for leftists (I mean, you did start the insulting pontificating, so I figure I’d return the favor 😉)
I’m also 39 and own two nice homes. My kids haven’t stepped foot in a public school. In reality, Biden has been fantastic for my wealth picture. I haven’t been handed anything but have worked hard, benefitted from gatekeeping since I purchased (and paid off) and undergrad and grad degree (as has my husband) and we can withstand the inflation price hikes far better than most of the people who actually voted for Biden. Under Biden, like most in our position, our wealth has shot up exponentially more than our bills. I get the financial benefits and none of the guilt because I didn’t vote for the 💩 show we are seeing yet again with a Dem in the Oval Office. Not wanting to “bomb bomb Iran” I voted for Obama, but carry huge guilt for it. This time watching the middle class get pointlessly hammered by over regulation and endless inflationary policies under Biden it’s nice not to have all that guilt inside.
I won’t vote for Democrats because I find Democrat policy outcomes at the moment to be very anti middle class, anti-labor. I have no idea in a decade or two. My political preferences have nothing to do with my personal identity.
Ideologically most of my adult life Democrats elect neocon/ neoliberals with insane domestic economic, social, and education policy, and those policies ARE most harming the poor, middle class.
I worked for what I have, and I don’t need Democrat policy produced hand ups at the expense of the middle class that is the backbone of this country I love. I also won’t engage in the nonsense the last 3 Democrat presidents aren’t really “Democrats” even though that’s who Democrats chose to represent the party.
When I realized the leftist policies I had supported from Democrats didn’t actually work, I admitted it to myself and changed the way I voted. Even in my days of voting almost entirely for Dems I remained grounded enough in reality to acknowledge it was WTO that mostly screwed the middle class and that was Clinton.
I’m not that tied to any political party. When I turned 18 I didn’t vote for Republicans because neocon war mongers set the policy for the party under Bush II. I was also heavily indoctrinated in undergrad and grad school. I didn’t yet realize bleeding heart liberal policies didn’t actually work. I’ve lived, I’ve learned, I’ve self-reflected, and I make better decisions. You should try that sometime.
These days I won’t vote for Democrats because neocon/ neoliberals are setting the policies for Democrats, and getting into debates about if they are “really” Democrats, or blaming congress for outcomes driven largely by ever increasing executive branch policies, or blaming republicans with a bunch of semantics gymnastics, isn’t based in objective reality and would demand I ignoring actual outcomes, which I personally am unwilling to do as actual outcomes are how I judge policies and politicians and political parties. Outcomes are what we all must live with.
Since you enjoy insults this is the last comment or response I will make to you. I don’t care who you vote for, odds are I’ll be just fine either way. Bye
Oh yeah, "CPA", then there's this:
https://itep.org/trump-gop-tax-law-encourages-companies-to-move-jobs-offshore-and-new-tax-cuts-wont-change-that/
"I disagree."
LOL! You have nothing to back that up! You are a troll:
1. The CRA did not cause the subprime mortgage crisis as it is applied to the regulated banks (https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2010/q4/pdf/federal_reserve.pdf). The subprime mortgage crisis was due to speculation on Wall Street due to investment houses and deregulation that allowed the creation of all sorts of financial instruments built from mortgage backed securities. In fact, it was the existence of the unregulated credit default swaps that was the straw that broke the crisis wide open.
2. "but I’m just a CPA with over 15 years of tax experience". Really? Who would hire you? Trump's tax cut were for the rich as shown by JCX-60-17 (https://www.jct.gov/publications/2017/jcx-60-17/). They failed (https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/789540931/2-years-later-trump-tax-cuts-have-failed-to-deliver-on-gops-promises), most didn't feel any benefit (https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2019/04/09/five-good-reasons-it-doesnt-feel-like-the-trump-tax-cut-benefited-you/?sh=b5552f413e0b).
Your publication from joint committee shows the middle class proportionally benefited more than the wealthy. Thanks for backing up my point!!!! 😂
Nope. Their tax cuts are disappearing year by year as shown. They are gone by 2027. The rich and corporations keep their hefty cuts though. Middle class tax payers didn't notice much, but the rich did: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tax-cuts-many-americans-dont-think-the-tax-cut-helped-them/. Why wouldn't a middle class tax payer notice $20/week in reduced taxes?
First, corporations still aren’t people. That’s a Mitt Romney theory that is objectively false. Second, your assertion that rich will benefit at the end is only true if the wealthy actually get their 2% deductions and SALT tax deductions back. No one is pushing to let the 2% deductions actually expire. Parties are even there. It appears to be many of the Dems itching to accelerate the return of uncapped SALT. Win to the R’s who oppose letting the cap expire.
How does that make Dems “better” for workers? Or worse for the rich?
Over the 10-year period, the highest proportional total benefit still goes to the middle class, even if the elimination of 2% deductions and SALT tax cap expire. Which they will if Dems stay in power.
I'm the daughter of a WWII veteran and widow of a combat veteran and also a teacher with a liberal history. I was belittled by a young union colleague for suggesting we commemorate Veterans at a campus event . I felt very sad.
I live in a right to work state. I've been a member of several unions and have never once seen local action to benefit employees. They do, however, make sure the slacker working nearby who can't show up on time, lollygags, abuses break times, etc., continues to be able to make their co-worker's lives more difficult. My first union was Teamsters. The rep showed up every Christmas to give everyone $40 and promise they were still working on those cool benefits. Never a change or improvement. I've watched unions strike/negotiate the jobs away (looking at Hostess here). Worst of all, when you get your "vote this way" mailers. You see leadership at parties and making endorsements and playing big-time maker and shaker. They don't need to work over the national politicians, they need to force the employer to the local table, period. The idea of unionizing entirely unskilled workers is silly too. If you do a job that anyone plucked at random off the street can do, your skill level gains no leverage. That's why Starbucks should be an interim/student/starter job and not a career. Same with fast food. Folks put a lot of time and effort into fighting for more money for no skill when they should dedicate that effort to acquiring more valuable skills. The promise of unions getting them $15 per hour at a national level is assured stagnation - they will wait for $15 rather than acquiring skills for $25. Not to mention the difference between $15 in the middle of nowhere and $15 in L.A.. Finally, there is no way in hell I'll give money to any group who sees social justice and woke ideology as the thing they are paid to do by their members.
A follow-up note. One fatal flaw for entry/student workers is the unwillingness or inability to properly package the skills they do acquire. I did this myself and helped my kids, friends and family. "I work at McDonald's" is not the same as "inventory management, customer relations, conflict resolution, training and mentoring experience, time management skills, detail oriented production, ..." - but they are the same job.
(If you do a job that anyone plucked at random off the street can do, your skill level gains no leverage.)-
There would have been no middle class with that attitude. Factory workers would never have been able to afford what they produced.
Apprenticeships are the gateway. The IBEW is outstanding in that area.
Definitely a plus for some unions (those who do it in skilled trades) with their training and accreditation - working the skill side rather than just the bargaining end.
I think private sector unions would be fine, if they prohibited dues to be used for lobbying.
I think public sector unions should be legislated out (fat chance) and are one of the principal reasons for runaway public spending, and gazzilions of dollars of un(der)funded pension funds.
Not a mention of how the open borders policy of the wokies and the Dems lets in millions of laborers and the downward pressure this puts on wages?? This point is always studiously avoided.
Exactly. That's what I expected to see when I saw the "woke" framing implied by the headline.
Plus she's an editor at Newsweek. Not exactly an "outsider" voice. WTF?
RIght to work laws are a good thing for union WORKERS (union LEADERS sometimes forget that the workers are as much a part of the union as they are). Without right-to-work laws, there's no check on their leader's ability to use union funds for political causes against the will of their members. Of course, the Democratic Party is 100% against right-to-work laws... a large percentage of their campaign funding comes from union LEADERS.
Another point... public employee unions are a DISASTER. FDR predicted it and it has come true. There are so many politicians owned lock, stock and barrel by public employee unions around the country... mostly, but not entirely, Democrats... that racketeering between governments and unions has become the standard in California (where I lived for 21 years). Both Republican and Democratic Governors got into racketeering with the corrections facility unions.
The trade unions in San Mateo County (where I lived) actually got an even better deal than Davis-Bacon... its municipalities are not merely requiring PLAs as an open quid-pro-quo for zoning approval, but the PLAs are requiring LOCAL union labor, not just prevailing wage labor, for PRIVATE construction projects. If the local unions are booked up, the project has to wait until they aren't. If that isn't unlawful, it should be. [AFAIK, they cannot override Davis-Bacon for a public project... and so prevailing wage labor may be brought in if needed.]
There should be NO public employees unions. None
Not liking the taste of those sour grapes, again?
Right to poverty laws make about as much sense for workers as making your property taxes voluntary does to local government.
Look for the union label… or should I say “shirkers of the world, unite”? That is where the SEIU crashed the party. Every one of its bosses engaged in racketeering should be prosecuted under RICO. Racketeering by purchasing politicians is SOP for that union. So is ignoring the rules for Democratic Action laid down in the late 1940s and accepted by the CIO and AFL.
I could not have summed it up better. Thx !
Keep in mind that labor unions have devolved into an organizing tool for Team D, and that Team D is dominated by PMC concerns.
Ever see five guys standing around watching one guy dig a hole? Want more of that? Want to pay $8 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks? Let’s not pretend that those things aren’t going to happen. And here are some recent examples that make me skeptical of unionization.
Teachers union – kept kids at home and then in masks with no scientific basis
Police union – protects any and all “bad apples” that contribute to public mistrust
Longshoreman union – exaggerating the supply chain crisis by refusing to be flexible while earning multiples of average household income
With the unemployment rate below 4% and employers eager to attract workers with higher wages and better benefits, individuals have more negotiating power than ever and they should use it to their personal advantage.
Ever see one guy (that used to be two guys) trying to dig a hole...while he has eight layers of "management" over him (working from home, no doubt) berating him because he's not digging fast enough, expending all their energies on pushing paper, marking territory, snorkeling their "manager's" ass, reveling over the smell of their own farts, raking in ever-growing bonuses by stripping the hole-digging guy of his benefits, and working furiously to automate/outsource the digging of the hole? Yeah, I didn't think so.
The teacher's union was responsible for keeping kids at home? OFTLOG, get help.
People vote with their wallets and their feet. In my super woke CA town, the pre-Covid 35+ student class size in my grandkids’ K-6, has dropped to <20, as parents sent their kids to the local Catholic schools rather than make them stay at home. There’s one elementary school that’s highly rated and everybody tried to fudge their home addresses to get in. That school was very strict about making sure you actually lived in their school zone before letting you enroll your kids. Now they take ANYBODY without verifying your address because their enrollment has been cut in half. Parents may yet save the Republic.
School choice/vouchers
The teachers unions ARE, based on historical records by union leaders and CDC and state/ federal agencies, largely responsible for the destruction of public school kids in the US. from idiotic school closures and mask mandates. This extends to pro-groomer curriculum, love of teaching neo-racism, and complete disregard for actual academics and knowledge based in objective reality.
Are my kids privileged? Heck yeah, because we work our butts off and sacrifice and pay money to ensure they attend a private school where the professionals care about their education and character development. Teachers unions have turned students in public schools into nothing more than a revenue stream for guaranteed income.
Should my kids feel guilty? Not a chance. We weren’t handed anything and the parents of the kids most harmed by Covid mitigation and pathetic academic standards are the kids of Democratic voters in deep blue cities where the literacy rates are the lowest and racial achievement gaps are the widest and growing. Its no wonder the literacy rate in CA is 10% BELOW WV.
It’s not my fault or my kids fault that people vote to sacrifice their own kids on the alter of woke teacher’s unions. I feel genuinely bad for the parents trapped in public schools who want better for their kids, which is why I support my tax dollars following the kid via school choice, not the teacher’s union.
That brings me to my other union example. I'm a boomer, to set the approximate time period. When I was in grade school and high school (both public) nearly all of my teachers were middle-aged or older. On the occasions (not really frequent or infrequent) when one of them expressed why he or she was a teacher, and/or why we students should consider it for a career, the reason nearly always centered on the satisfaction gained from broadening yound minds. But in my sophomore HS year, I was assigned to a young English teacher, who had recently graduated from state teachers' college. She heartily recomended it as a career, but for entirely different reasons. According to her, those were: good pay; easy work; regular hours with no overtime required; Summers off to either work another job, or loaf; and last, but not least, that the union made it nearly impossible for a teacher to be fired. There are undoubtedly many other factors, but I personally date the corruption of the US public education system from the day that I heard her express that opinion.
Don't forget the pension benefits, a retirement that private sector workers can only dream of. And all paid for by the taxpayers, voted on by politicians bought and paid for by teacher unions.
I commend you on your choice of a screen name. It certainly is appropriate.
Government unions exist to raise taxes and reduce services, private sector unions exist to raise wages made off the worker's generated profits. With government there is no such thing as profit.
The teacher's union dictated covid policy to the CDC. They determined if and when schools would open and whether or not kids would have to wear masks. It was allowed to do this because it is one of the largest donors to Democrats. Union members don't have a say in how their dues are spent. This doesn't sound like a help to the workers, it sounds like corruption.
"The teacher's union dictated covid policy to the CDC"
I'm not feeling well today, so thanks for the belly laugh.
Laugh all you want. Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, was in contact with Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-centers-for-politics-and-unions-11620168584
https://thechalkboardreview.com/latest/lobbying-for-deception
"Laugh all you want."
Oh, trust me when I tell you...I AM!
This collaboration was revealed through a FOIA request. When you can't rebut, you laugh I guess.
You've gone from "dictated covid policy" to "collaboration".
Still laughing...
Typical liberal. When you cannot address the topic, they attack the person. Not laughing with you; just shaking my head. You've chosen ignorance over information.
What would you call it? Randi reaches out to Rochelle and days later Randi's policy is implemented.
Teachers in my country were all in huge favor of unlimited lockdowns and how any risk was too great to ever consider reopening (Guess who was getting their full salary for not doing any work)
It's crazy that the union has that much clout.
There is a lot of truth to that. School districts did not want to have to sue their teachers' unions to get the unions to honor their contracts.
Even if the school districts won, suing your employees back to work is not necessarily always the surest route to a hardworking and satisfied teaching staff.
Sorry Batya, but outside of a few isolated examples the union value proposition is lacking. Unionizing just adds another "boss" to a worker's life - one that steals their money for political contributions over which the unionized worker has no say. Since 2010, 99% of political contributions from unions have gone to Democratic causes, even though half of union households vote Republican. It's not the 19th century, and employers at all levels are desperate for quality workers, and are very flexible about pay and benefits, consistent with staying in business, of course.
Two more specific points: as contributor AngelO points out nearby, how do you reconcile the union-funded Democratic Party's open border policy, which brings in millions of hardworking but unskilled people every year, with increased unionization? The second point is the corruption endemic to unions. From 2016-2018 alone, just 2 years, 143 union leaders admitted to crimes. If unions are so great, why do they have to beat people up routinely who oppose them? Why do (teachers) unions oppose school choice when the vast majority of all Americans want their kids to get a good education?
I do agree with one point, however - they protect their own. Whether it's bad teachers a school wants to fire, or bad cops a police chief wants to dismiss, the union is their to take care of "their people". If it wasn't for Democratic governments unionizing themselves and insisting on "prevailing (union) wage" contracts for all of their projects we pay for, they'd already be gone. Unless unions radically reform and become apolitical, they are toast, and that's not going to happen because they are really run by progressive Democrats.
Thank you for pointing out the large elephant in the room sitting in the corner taking a l dump that nobody ever wants to talk about, well done.
"...employers at all levels are desperate for quality workers, and are very flexible about pay and benefits, consistent with staying in business, of course."
The company I work for, and have for the last 27 years, is a paltry shadow of its former self. Several buyouts and constant reorgs, beginning in the '90s, have resulted in thousands of employees being forced to take "separation" packages, "retiring" early, or quitting outright at the horrible, god-awful environment - including being fired for "insubordination" for refusing to work a 70-hour week, without proper compensation. I have born witness to the ongoing decimation of the benefits, from a contributory pension plan to nothing; hard caps on PTO rollover, complete elimination of relocation packages; and a continuing transfer of medical/dental costs to the employee; hiring unqualified "outsiders" to "manage" orgs, then leave a huge mess for the gray beards to clean up, etc, etc.
When asked why the company is continuing to engage in these destructive practices, while at the very same time whining ENDLESSLY about how "hard it is to hire qualified people, the answer is always the same:
"...to remain competitive"
If companies can't find, hire and retain "quality workers", it's their own damned fault, and it has nothing to do with labor unions...NOTHING!
I'm sorry for your experience and I don't doubt it for a minute. Sounds like you worked for a lousy company, and I'll bet they're struggling with those policies, if they are even in business.
So quit and go elsewhere - there are a lot of great companies out there for people who care about the quality of their work. I know, I ran one. We had every color, ethnicity and sexual identity. Workers reviewed their supervisors anonymously, and 360 degree reviews were standard. Every employee was offered equity - stock - well below fair value, and they could sell whenever they wanted. Compensation was transparent. We had fun gatherings designed by employees. We paid most (not all - we want people to understand the country they live in) health insurance and had a very generous 401(k) match. Employees set their own goals because they knew the company, our market, and what we needed to do. We also had profit-sharing. In good years, we paid extra bonuses. In bad years, senior management took any hit, and no one was ever laid off. We expected integrity and hard work. I know many other firms like ours in many different industries. In our case and many others, unions simply had no value to add.
Unions are also gate-keepers. They collude with politicians to make licensing difficult so that it is hard to find a job and work.
In Canada, government issued credentials are also used as gate- keepers. The banking business has no room whatsoever for those who did not come up through the ranks in Canada… they wouldn’t have the right pieces of paper to be hired and can’t get them.
They claim to be fair to immigrants, but there aren’t many options if you do not fit into a niche where foreigners are even allowed… or lose your job in such a niche and fall hopelessly far behind native Canadians for any new openings.
That's how you protect the wage scale, while hopefully ensuring some level of quality.
True.
But Union supporters love to depict themselves as some altruistic people (“fraternity” like this writer putting it) fighting for the worker against the powerful capitalist.
In reality the main and first function of the union is to build a wall around the profession and make it hard for ordinary people to get into it. Otherwise they will have no leverage over business-owners whatsoever.
And of course they will claim all this licensing is to ensure quality but we all know what it really is.
Guilds are not all bad, but they do increase the cost of what they are guilding. The question is are they providing a superior product and thus is the added protection warranted...
I am very sympathetic to workers but dislike left wing unions. Real wages increased under Trump. Controlling the border and immigration helps American workers. Very worried what “Universal health care” would look like considering the same group runs the DMV.
Unions were a hindrance to my dad’s career. I’ve no interest in unions as I see no benefit they offer that I can’t get on my own.
If unions want members they can do what any other private organization does: make itself useful to those they want to join.
Otherwise let unions go the way of every other outdated, useless organization.
never been a member of a union, but still remember my mother's brother going on strike for almost a year....to get a dime an hour raise.
Some years later that plant closed in Upstate New York and relocated.
Math is hard
No it’s really not but accepting reality can be painful for some.
To mention SEIU and IBEW in the same paragraph succinctly describes the wide spectrum of unions. SEIU is a Marxist organization that only serves the Democrat political machine by providing money and delusional rubes to destroy our great nation. IBEW serves the needs of its members while getting the job done. Diamonds vs Dogshit. Yes, it's that simple.
Tip: when I see "Marxist' used nonsensically, I stop reading. I doubt I'm the only one. At best, it adds nothing. Try the sentence without it.
Tip: When I see “Oregon” used locationally, I stop reading.
SEIU is even more committed to racketeering than the Teamsters at their worst.
Good article, but I've got to push back on the assertion that we need Universal healthcare. The disaster of the past two years solidified in my mind that the government should not be involved in healthcare because it will ultimately be used to control people. Since, at least in the US, big Pharma rules the roost, the care and "help" that they would give us would only be to improve pharma profits and not be for our health. The example is the aggressive force used now to prevent open discussion of different treatments for COVID and to prevent doctors from making independent decisions doesn't bode well for centralized control.
Good points Laura! The censorship of scientific debate by the marriage ofbig pharma and the government is disastrous, beyond the fact that big government run programs are so inefficient, wasteful, and many times corrupt. These past two years were eye opening!
As a teacher, and belonging to a union, well, thank God. Not only is there a good pension, but health benefits that would cost me a small fortune if I were not a member. There would be all manner of inequities if there was no union since the Board of Education could really take advantage, and in the past I heard they would fire teachers quite easily, over nothing, and sometimes forgot to pay them for a day or a week's, or month's work. Unions are a good thing, well the teacher's union is. The big negative is that whether your a good teacher, or a bad teacher you are covered, and some teachers really suck, but they manage to stick around for years and walk away with a very good pension they never earned. No matter the negatives I support unions. They do call dutifully to tell me to vote for democrats, but now a days I just don't listen because democrats ain't what they use to be, and haven't been for a very long time.
The teachers unions were a sick disaster during COVID.
Before unions teachers were making little money with a college degree and treated poorly by the Board of Ed. They're not perfect, but better with them then without them. I don't disagree with what you said.