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Originally Posted by MrFxFw "...Rocky, the funny thing is that Unions are by nature communist organizations. The members claim to be proud americans, yet thumb their nose at the very principle that the founding fathers incorporated; capitalism. We are a capitalist nation that rewards those who take great risk and work hard. Communism stifles individuals by rewarding everyone for doing nothing...it's the old principle of the lowest common denominator (socialism/communism) or the highest common denominator (capitalism). I guess if I were incapable of doing for myself, I'd pay someone else to do for me...
Jeff..." |
You are so... so off-base, my friend.
There is nothing more American than unionism.
We have the right to withhold our labor in order to negotiate with an employer. How many other countries have currently or historically ever allowed this?
We use our collective numbers to gain leverage and weight whilst negotiating with the employer.
Negotiating is capitalism, is it not? Market forces, and all that? A collective bargaining unit
is a market force, because in any negotiation, the market will pay what the market will bear.
We vote in our leadership. We as members of a union have rights and a voice and a vote.
Your concept of the single worker, working hard and for himself, achieving all is great and fine... it's just not necessarily supported by the statistics.
Most entrepreneurs never make it. Most small businesses fail. Union workers make more in real wages, are more likely to be covered by health insurance and a retirement plan that non-union workers, and are abl to retire earlier and more secrurelly than their non-union counterparts. But corporations get bigger, and their CEOs and shareholders get richer and richer. There can be no better way of proving what I am saying than by examining how the gap between the rich and the poor continues to get wider every day,a nd how quickly the middle-class in this country is evaporating.
To compare our union seniority system to Communism is not only insulting, it's a wrong-headed and ignorant comparison. Go back to the Great Depression, or even back to the turn of the century. Once you were to too old to be "useful" and "productive", according to the bosses, you were kicked to the side and left to fend for yourself. Children were forced to work twelve hour days, six days a week. The poor remained poor,a nd wealthy got wealthier.
Don't mistake capitalism for what we had, which was a system of monopoly and greed. It took brave politicians like Theodore Roosevelt-- who broke up the largest monopolistic trusts using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the early 1900's-- along with the unions who stood up for the working man, to turn our system of "capitalism" into something more fair, equal and compassionate.
Don't get suckered into that train of thought that says that pure capitalism is somehow pure and untouchable and without reproof, because that is a flawed way of thinking.
No socio-economic system or model of government is ever perfect, and any social scientist will tell you that. We have done as good a job as is probably humanly possible in this country of cherry-picking from all possible models to create a system that favors individual rights, protects the weak and minorities, seeks justice, and glorifies liberty. Not every aspect of Socialism is bad, nor is every aspect of Capitalism good. Hybridized systems like ours have the ability to survive and proper because of their very design, and that is why this country has propered and survived where others have not.
Unions are very American. I am a proud American, and a proud Teamster. I love this country, and I love what my union does for me.
And there isn't a damned thing wrong about
that...
Supply and Demand 
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