Kirk, since you're too small-minded for personal experience and "anecdotes", I'll put it in terms even you can understand.
Back in the 70's and before, the U.S. steel industry, one of the backbones of American industry, was flourishing. There was no reason for that to change, given the amount of resources and technology to keep the industry growing and flourishing. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to Happily Ever After Land. In the late 70's and beyond, Japan started to take large pieces away from the pie, and U.S. steel started floundering. Now..... you can cite product dumping in the U.S. market, cost of environmental controls, etc, all you want. But obviously you'll gloss over and ignore one of the biggest reasons of them all.
While the U.S. Steelworkers unions were fighting for half-hour coffee breaks and overly generous wage increases, Japan was quietly taking over the industry with its worker mindset and culture of working as one with company management. You know..... those Plains Apes you stupidly refer to in your childishly moronic descriptions. Sure..... there were other factors, as well as other countries in Europe taking from the pie. But it was Japan steel squashing U.S. steel that was making all the headlines. The U.S. steel industry has never recovered, and countless plants were closed, affecting the livelihoods of thousands of workers and their families. Maybe you can find us a nice chart and graph on that.
What holds for the steel industry can likely be repeated with ditto marks for other core industries as well. But you get the point (or not).
You see Kirk....... when Johnny and Sally join unions that proceed to drive up labor costs and making all sorts of outlandish demands, their employer ACME Company starts to lose competitiveness. ACME's costs go up, so product prices go up. Johnny and Sally's friends and family can no longer afford to buy the purple widgets from ACME Company. Eventually, a country such as Japan, with the foresight to know that industry can be a win-win with the right attitude, starts to make the purple widgets at half the price as ACME Company was making them. Soon all of Johnny and Sally's friends and family (including Johnny and Sally) start buying the purple widgets from the Japanese company. Lo and behold, ACME Company can no longer survive and closes. Ooooooohhhh!!! Johnny and Sally are left without jobs, and no longer make the money needed to buy their purple widgets from anybody.
Now...... how's about you printing up some of those little, neat charts and graphs and go wipe your own ass with them.
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