What is wrong with this picture?

[fpb]

Or, to be precise, with this quotation? Two successive titles - successive, mind you - on the conservative news service Townhall.com:

Mike Shedlock:
U.S. Local Governments Cut Payrolls to Lowest Level Since 2006

Chris Edwards:
Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The two statements don't contradict one another. Taken in tandem, they imply that of the monies being spent on governmental employees, less are going to local government employees and more to public employee unions. Money which goes to a union does not go to its employees, nor do they normally benefit from it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Sorry, this will not do. The standard union-busting narrative is that unions bleed the taxpayers on behalf of their selfish members - not that they ignore their members and take the money themselves.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why must either the standard union narrative ("the unions are why the workers' pay has risen") or the standard union-busting narrative be true? IMO neither are exclusively true: the workers' pay has risen because per capita productivity has risen owing to technological progress, and the unions bleed the taxpayers on behalf of their selfish (and ambitious) leaders. Remember that a union is essentially a business in the field of controlling labor supply: why should it be any different from any other forcible monopoly?.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, right. Sure. I don't think we are on the same page, to say the least, and I suggest we stop right here.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"payrolls at lowest levels" and "bankrupting the nation" do in fact contradict each other.

Nor does money go to a union without passing through the hands of its employees; an idea that unions are somehow plundering public treasuries without any benefit to their members is logically possible in some bizarro universe, but not relevant to this one.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Nor does money go to a union without passing through the hands of its employees ...

It does when the union gets to directly deduct dues from the employees' wages, which is what some public service unions are able to and others want to do. It also effectively does in jobs where union membership is a requirement for holding the job ("closed shops") and in those circumstances, the employee must pay his dues promptly or risk job termination.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I never would have expected it of you, but you have just made a terrible and elementary mistake in logic. What mindstalk said is that you cannot have a situation where money goes to a union without first at least passing through the hands of its members. And you just confirmed it - the money has to pass through the members' bank accounts before any union deduction, however compulsory, can be made - and actually thought you were contradicting him. Nul points for formal logic; look up "Aristotle's law of non-contradiction".

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

If the union dues are unavoidable, then what difference does it make to the worker if he temporarily has the money in his account? (and sometimes he doesn't -- sometimes the union automatically deducts the dues). It is quite possible for workers to be doing poorly but the union leadership to be doing quite well under such a system -- while the cost of hiring the workers climbs to the state.

You would have no problem recognizing such an exploitation of the workers if it was being carried out by the employers -- why do you have such a problem recognizing it if it's carried out by the unions?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If the unions were not of advantage to the workers, they would not have lasted a couple of centuries. If the worker gets a raise above inflation of five, and the union takes two, the worker is still three better off. And if he were not, the unions would not last. Your constant attempt to associate unionism with mafia-like destructive exploitation is culture-specific but neither well conceived nor well argued. And I still say that you should at least have avoided the obvious violation of the most elementary logic.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Still fails. I imagine union dues will be a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of income, I don't know which. In the first case a raise accrues entirely to the employee, in the second case it accrues largely to the employee. In neither case can the union be said to be plundering the treasury without benefit to its members.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Work half-way done?

(Editor's reply. It seems tome some useful things are being done piecemeal, and some horrendous cuts are happening which shouldn't be done. Any rebalancing of public expenditure will hurt, i'm afraid.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, either expenses are being cut, or unions are preventing them. You can't have it both ways.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Heh! Good catch.