I guess that Vic and I aer charter members of Mrns Anonymous. Still want to see the movie. I am visiting my daughter and grandson, so my time is not my own. L8R.
If you get the book, might want to get a used hardback, the paperback has tiny lettering, too small for old folk! It’s about 1200 pages. So no wonder it will be in 3 parts.
Steve, what do you mean “Anonymous” were organized, Amalgamated Morons
(http://www.newshawker.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/The-Three-Stooges.jpg)
We are morons tried and true, and we’ll do our yell for you…yannggg yanngg yannggg Watched “Get low” dang good movie, recommended
Victor Smith said:Unionized? That will make you at least TWICE as bad to any fan of Ayn Rand.
Steve, what do you mean "Anonymous" we're organized, Amalgamated Morons
Better that than the Indentured Servitude of Serfdom her hardest core followers would like to resign all working class people too, seriously if the followers of this philosophy truely understood just how the uber-rich would treat their workers without any legal restraints I dont think most would be so rosey about Rand, I suggest Upton Sinclairs “The Jungle” and John Stienbechs “The Grapes of Wrath” which were both based on true incidents of how workers were treated before alot of the worker protections Randians rail against were put in place, these stories were written as witnessed by the authors, if anyone thinks that uber-rich Billionares have your best interests at heart, they are dillusional, you are a number, a statistic, a disposable statistic at that, not a person or a family or even a name, they will fire you or decide your only worth $5 an hour if makes them .3% increase in profits, and if that consigns you to living under a bridge they dont give a fig, thats why unions began, to protect workers against the inhuman working conditions and treatment they were subjected to, and Rands followers would also get rid of OSHA and all the laws that allow employees to fight back for their rights, there is a reason these laws exist that go straight back to the world Sinclair and Steinbech lived in. No one remembers the world before the Depression and what a dangerous place it could be to live or work, where speaking your mind could get you not only fired, but beat up, shot and your house firebombed by company thugs, yes these things all happened, the facts are there if your brave enough to look with open eyes. Don’t trust the Uber-rich backers of this Randian philosophy, if you are not as rich as them, they are not your buddy buddies.
Bravo!.. And I own my own business too. 'tis a wee one though. But… I’ve come to conclusion that politicians for the most part think of themselves as a special empowered class that don’t give a fig about much beyond the next election.
Victor Smith said:Vic are you describing the Ultra Rich Multi-National Off-Shore Banking Military-Industrial Complex or our own US Federal .gov ?
Better that than the Indentured Servitude of Serfdom her hardest core followers would like to resign all working class people too, seriously if the followers of this philosophy truely understood just how the uber-rich would treat their workers without any legal restraints I dont think most would be so rosey about Rand, I suggest Upton Sinclairs "The Jungle" and John Stienbechs "The Grapes of Wrath" which were both based on true incidents of how workers were treated before alot of the worker protections Randians rail against were put in place, these stories were written as witnessed by the authors, if anyone thinks that uber-rich Billionares have your best interests at heart, they are dillusional, you are a number, a statistic, a disposable statistic at that, not a person or a family or even a name, they will fire you or decide your only worth $5 an hour if makes them .3% increase in profits, and if that consigns you to living under a bridge they dont give a fig, thats why unions began, to protect workers against the inhuman working conditions and treatment they were subjected to, and Rands followers would also get rid of OSHA and all the laws that allow employees to fight back for their rights, there is a reason these laws exist that go straight back to the world Sinclair and Steinbech lived in. No one remembers the world before the Depression and what a dangerous place it could be to live or work, where speaking your mind could get you not only fired, but beat up, shot and your house firebombed by company thugs, yes these things all happened, the facts are there if your brave enough to look with open eyes. Don't trust the Uber-rich backers of this Randian philosophy, if you are not as rich as them, they are not your buddy buddies.
Is there any difference between the two…isn’t one just the puppet of the other?
again, it’s not a question of Left or Right…it’s all about Liberty or the lack thereof.
Business owner x2 as well
http://completeall.com/History/America-100-Years-Ago.html
The golden past some want to return us to…
I never was hired to a job by a poor person. Unions do not produce anything. People gain wealth by investing their time, money, sweat and tears more than a poor person. The key to financial success is to spend less than your earn.
David Hill said:Oh, Banana Oil! This isn't the place to discuss it, but a LOT of poor people work their asses off only to get kicked in the teeth over and over by their 'betters'.
..... People gain wealth by investing their time, money, sweat and tears more than a poor person. ...The key to financial success is to spend less than your earn.
The ‘rich’ are taxed less than they historically have been, and the concentration of wealth by the top 10% is higher than it has been since before the Depression… yet we just had a severe recession, fuel and food prices are now soaring. The ultra rich didn’t create wealth… or jobs for anybody but themselves. in fact they played money games that CAUSED the recession AND the resulting 10% unemployment. That particular bit of rhetoric just doesn’t wash.
In the dog eat dog world the ultra-cons espouse, either you’re top dog or you’re dinner. Take time to read 'The Jungle" if you haven’t. Take time to read about the trusts. Take time to read about the Traingle Shirtwaist fire… BEFORE you espouse going back to that business model.
I keep hearing “Root hog! or Die!”… I keep hearing that since my health went and I CANNOT work at all without meds I CANNOT afford without help, that I’m a “useless burden upon society” … I guess I should die then?
I’m certainly not sure I’d WANT to be part of a society where the likes of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Sheriff of Nottingham would be considered good role models!
Mik said:Survival of the fittest???
In the dog eat dog world the ultra-cons espouse, either you're top dog or you're dinner.
Just MHO, Read the words in red. Heed the words in red. Even though I think you may find the gent in question’s position may seem that of a “flaming Liberal” at first.
My trouble with your ‘survival of the fittest’ is, shouldn’t we be BETTER than that? Almost half the wealth is in the hands of less than 10% of the population. You say they earned it. Fine. Meanwhile, I’ll also point out that General Electric paid less in taxes than you probably did. (Google it) Poor people (and even teacher’s union members) are just that… people. Shouldn’t the richest nation on earth be able to afford to give them just a little dignity and respect?
“Unions do not produce anything.”
David, ever wonder where the 40 hr work week came from? Minimum Wage? Child Labor laws? Work safety rules? Just to name a few, but I guess 8yr olds should work in coal mines instead of wasting time in school.
David Hill said:David,
I never was hired to a job by a poor person. Unions do not produce anything. People gain wealth by investing their time, money, sweat and tears more than a poor person. The key to financial success is to spend less than your earn.
I’m only quoting your post to make a point and not directing this at you. Even though I’ve never belonged to any organized bargaining unit (hourly or salaried) I don’t understand the hatred of unions and the dislike of poor people.
There are thousands of organizations in the US that were started to promote the interests of a particular group of people. AARP lobbies for the rights of seniors and political parties promote the best interest of their own members. The US Chamber of commerce’s mission is to get the best deal possible for it’s membership of midsized and large companies. Small business has the National Federation of Independent Business out there fighting for the rights of not so big business. Virtually every industry has trade organizations and lobbyists looking out for the interests of their members … so why not Labor? Why shouldn’t workers in a particular plant, office or industry have a voice in the conditions of their work environment and getting honest compensation. When GM or GE pressures congress to protect them from unfair foreign competition they’re looking out for the welfare of the shareholders, not the workers, and that’s O.K., I guess, that’s the nature of corporations. Why then shouldn’t the workers have a right to seek protection from unfair or predatory conditions in their workplace? In a few places they still can, through their union.
Unions are nothing new, they’ve just had different names. For example, “Guilds” were groups of skilled craftsmen organized in England and other European countries hundreds of years ago to keep their members from being exploited. Today in the U.S. we have unions representing teachers, engineers, lawyers, scientists, writers, etc, etc etc. And yes we have unions also representing semi-skilled and unskilled labor. Are those the people who are undeserving of protection and representation? … if so, why? As for the poor - ever try raising a family of four on $12 an hour - there isn’t much left over for saving, much less job creation.
Last point - If we continue to squeeze U.S. labor in the private sector to meet the standards of off-shore companies we engage in a race to the bottom that will leave a very large portion of this country’s workers at or near third-world levels. The same thing applies to workers in the public sector - I don’t see how that benefits anyone (in the US).
Victor Smith said:
"Unions do not produce anything."David, ever wonder where the 40 hr work week came from? Minimum Wage? Child Labor laws? Work safety rules? Just to name a few, but I guess 8yr olds should work in coal mines instead of wasting time in school.
Vic,
Those are not products. They can’t be sold. They are policies.
Unions do not produce anything to add to the economy.
And your argument regarding child labor is specious.
@ Walter.
I have no quarrel with union members or poor people. I’m one of them.
My complaint is with the union bosses who do not have the best interests of their members at heart. Witness the union thug bosses in Wisconsin who would rather many of their members be laid off rather than the alternative.
And, no, I do not think that public employees should have collective bargaining rights, and neither did FDR or George Meany, the first leader of AFL-CIO. The boss of the public employee (Us, you and me) does not get to sit at the table. It is the union bosses bargaining with the politicians, who then get kickbacks in the form of campaign donations from the very people they did the bargaining with. That is insane!
But Steve those things might not be a “product” but they have allowed workers in the long run to be more productive to the economy than their 3rd world counterpart as they have more economic buying power more leasure time to spend that buying power on and as such have added untold wealth to the GNP over the years they have been in exisitence, how much spending power does a factory worker in Vietnam working 60 hours a week making $4 a week have in that economy when it takes $10 a week just to make a decent living? Theres a reason those countries are so poverty striken. If they try to organize they could end up in jail or face down in a ditch somewhere.
And I suggest you do a little research of the history of child labor in the US, it wasnt that very long ago kids would leave school at very young ages to work in factories, mines, whatever they could find because unles every available memeber of the family unit didnt work, the families would starve. There were many documented cases of this including young children being put to work in the mines to seperate rock from coal or to seperate ore rocks by size in stamp mills, this inevitably left them with serious hearing loss. Again this is all public record, but for some reason people want to think the years at the turn of the century up to before the depression were some bucolic wonderland, they were not, it was a harse hard life for most people, which is why labor rights were so hard fought for. I find all the right wing vitriol against the working class so puzzling these days…but somehow were supposed to feed the rich even more???
Be carefull of the world you wish for, you may be cursed to live in it.
This being a railroad forum, if you’re looking for reading material, I suggest you go and read up on the practices that built the railroads across this nation. “Deplorable” doesn’t begin to describe it. Chinese/Irish labor? They weren’t some ultra-willing labor pool looking for adventure. Society treated them as second-class citizens. Discrimination was such that they couldn’t get jobs anywhere else, so they took the dangerous jobs building the railroads where they were considered expendable by the railroad management. Private sector abuse of government resources? Head out to Promentory Point some time. The CP and UP’s grades passed each other and ran parallel for a good number of miles because each was trying to milk the government for as much money as possible instead of simply joining the two lines like they were supposed to. The government had to intervene and force them to join in the middle.
Safety? Read the newspaper accounts of the accidents that occurred in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Think there’s a railroader today that wants to go back to walking atop icy box cars with a brake club in one hand? And if he could hold the brake club, it meant he was fairly new on the job and hadn’t lost fingers to the link-and-pin couplers. What changed those practices? “We the people.” It wasn’t government, it wasn’t the railroads. It was the workers. They organized, pressured, and invented. They drove the innovations that led to safer equipment. They used labor unions as a means to get their needs met. Government and railroads reacted to the efforts of the workers. (Actually, the government reacted. The railroads went kicking and screaming because it was going to cost them $$ to implement.)
Are there (were there) abuses in government and labor? Absolutely. No one’s above that fray; it’s the nature of the beast. But just as a politician’s primary goal is to get re-elected, a company’s primary goal is to make money. How it does that–and at what cost to others–has long been demonstrated as being immaterial to their primary goal. The ends justify the means, even if it ultimately means cutting off their nose despite their face.
If we’re going to rally around something, we shouldn’t be “anti-government,” or “anti-free market.” We need to be “pro-us.” We need to protest against companies offshoring our jobs and factories just as loudly as we protest against government spending. We need to protest the “fat cats” who use loopholes to avoid paying their fair share as loudly as we protest the “welfare queens” who exploit the system to their benefit. We are “we the people.” We need to look out for our best interests with the same fervor the corporations and politicians look after their own. And we need to wake up and realize “our best interests” are not ideological. “Our best interests” are the exact same best interests as what drives corporations and politicians–our bottom line and keeping our jobs. When we’re standing in the bread line, what difference does ideology make?
Later,
K
Steve,
I was a field engineer (factory rep) for over 30 years. I visited manufacturing plants all over the country dealing with virtually every segment of industry. Some of those plants were unionized while others were non-union. I’ve formed some pretty solid opinions from those experiences.
I found that the workers in union plants were almost always better trained and therefore more competent and productive. They generally had a better attitude toward the company they worked for and were more likely to stay. Management/Labor relations seemed less contentious and management treated workers with greater respect. They were better paid than non-union shops and therefore management generally had a higher caliber of new-hires to choose from. I think union workers were usually more content, felt better about themselves, their jobs, and their company and maybe most importantly they felt more secure than their non-union counterparts.
In my view a union is a union - doesn’t matter who management represents - stockholders or taxpayers, what’s the difference? Neither the stockholders nor the taxpayers sit in on the negotiations, they send their proxies, the managers or the politicians. It’s true that unions contribute to political campaigns, usually to the party that’s most likely to have their best interests at heart, the donkeys. But the business owners and managers contribute heavily to the other side, the elephants, so it’s probably a wash. Nobody but the politicians gain. I suppose there are a few “thugs” who are union bosses but I personally fear the thugs wearing the Brooks Brothers suits with Phi Beta Epsilon pins in their lapels than I do the guys on the other side of the table with cauliflower ears.
Blaming public unions and collective bargaining for the mess most states are in today is simply scapegoating. A f-----up economy, reduced tax receipts and lousy fiscal policy are the problem. We want our kids educated, our roads repaired, cops and firefighters at the ready and short lines at the DMV but we don’t want to pay for it. But we seem to be O.K. with paying for important stuff like broadband, cell phones, granite counters, and 300 HP cars. Why don’t we hear howls of protest when some of those CEOs of companies that received bailouts collect multi-million dollar bonuses and then also insist on more tax breaks less they pick up their marbles and take their facilities offshore.