Impeachment

[Kirkland Laing]

Again, the plural of anecdote is not data. And you're making a load of incorrect claims about investment and growth being deterred. Once again here are economic growth rates in America since the end of WW2:

You keep saying that, and countering with data that I can easily argue is circumstantial. You yourself have said there are numerous factors that affect the economy, including productivity and investment. So why can't I counter your "plural of anecdote is not data" with..... "data presented out of context can be misleading and easily manipulated"? You tell me I've made a "load of incorrect claims about investment and growth being deterred"..... then you turn around and present me with growth rate data, presumably wanting to assign all of it to the growth (or lack thereof) of unions. Do you honestly expect me to just take you at your word?

You know I'm not going to get into a graphs and charts battle with you. Also we both know I don't have the economics background that you seem to have. But to easily dismiss personal experience as "anecdotes, not data" is a bit presumptuous, if you don't mind my saying so. Let's establish here that just like you're obviously a huge fan of unions....... I'm NOT.

Back when America had the highest rates of growth and investment was the time one in three Americans belonged to a union (now under tenpercent) and nonunion workers could unionise so easily that nonunion companies had to keep pace with union wage and benefit increases or their workers would unionise meaning back before 1980 American labour was effectively fully unionised.

Here's productivity:



Productivity fell off due to the two gigantic oil shocks in the seventies (in 1973 alone the price of oil quadrupled overnight). It picked back up in the nineties and 2000s due to Microsoft which is a one in a lifetime kind of productivity jump and we'll probably get a similiar jump when AI bears fruit in a decade or three. But look at productivity right now. We've had forty years of successively smashing the unions, every single "business friendly" policy (slashing taxes and regulation) that business wanted and look at the situation right now. Really low productivity, the lowest levels of investment in the modern era and a massively unequal economy. De facto nionisation of labour back in the day certainly didn't affect producivity too much, did it?

Amazing that high taxes, a properly regulated economy and strong unions provided much better economic growth that was broadly shared, not shitty economic growth that all goes to top earners with three quarters of Americans living paycheque to paycheque.

Circumstantial. For every article that says unions have been (and are) good for productivity and investment, I can find another that says the opposite. Articles written by economists, not me.

But whatever. Neither of us will ever change our stance. The point I've constantly made, which has been constantly ignored, is that unions have brought a whole set of ills to industry that cannot be measured simply by dollars and cents. You may or may not agree with that statement, or even pull out your "anecdote" comment again....... but it remains true. Maybe if you had a broader background in industry and we could discuss things not covered in your graphs, you'd see the other side of the coin.

Seventy five years of economic data is circumstantial whereas the opinion of one person is the definitive answer to whether unions have been and are a good thing for the economy and its participants.

Let's look at one aspect of it to try and explain this more clearly to the hard of thinking. Productivity, the amount one person produces per unit (normally per hour) of work. Productivity has increased by twenty percent since 2007. That means we can produce twenty percent more output with the same amount of work that we could back in 2007. That's about a three trillion dollar increase in income which works out at about $36000 a year per family.

Now Kirkland, I hear you say. You told us that the average family would be making $20000 a year more in 2020 than they were in 1980 if they'd maintained the share of increased income that they used to get pre Reagan. How come they'd get nearly twice that just since 2007? Well it's because workers don't get all the increase for themselves. They only get a share. Back in the seventies the lion's share of increased income went to the people who own the capital -- the existing money stock and means of production, factories, shops and so on. And that's good! As one of the owners of that capital I completely agree that the Plains Apes who own the capital should get the largest share of the returns on that capital.

But it turns out that if the Plains Apes who own all the capital take all of the increase in income, which is what has happened since Reagan took office, it fucks the economy up to the point where forty years later our now massively unequal rigged economy is sputtering along badly despite massive fiscal and monetary stimulus. A small minority of people are doing well and the vast majority are living paycheque to paycheque. And things are only going to get worse.

Does this look to you like a situation in which unions have too much power and control over the economy versus the small number of Plains Apes with the dough?