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Beginning of the End for Public Unions?

Last two years beginning of a downward slide for Public Sector Unions?


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Its a fact? What do you mean? It's a fact that you stop at a red light and go at a green light too. That doesn't mean society didn't decide that was how we would do things.

I already explained myself. If you remember you called it a slogan. I'm still waiting for you to explain to me how its not the order of things rationally, naturally, and justly. You have done none of them.

A street light is a rule crafted out of safety. Property rights is crafted out of the natural order. Don't let that stop you though as it sure didn't stop marx from making an ass out of himself.
 
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Marxist? Awesome. From each to each?
Failing to protect property rights is unjust. Without justice there can be no civil society. Why bother funding such a government?

Er what? Marxism? Failing to protect property rights? Where did you get that stuff from lol?

In a capitalist society, or a society operating under any other economic scheme, we decide what rules to operate under. You can have property rights and capitalism just the same whether you have companies run by boards of directors that are exclusively elected by investors or that are exclusively elected by employees or a mix of the two. You can have property rights and capitalism just the same whether you tax investors at the same rates, lower rates, or higher rates than you tax workers. Etc. Of course society decides how to set those things. Who else would?
 
Really, no idea what I'm talking about? I can't believe that. You know perfectly fine that if people that are right below him get taxed along with him it will hurt them more than it hurts him and thus it works to his advantage. Maybe if you thought about the argument put out by liberals on the flat tax it would of been obvious?
So Buffet wants the Buffet Rule for the same reason conservatives want a flat tax? Then you guys should be jumping all over it! :)
 
So Buffet wants the Buffet Rule for the same reason conservatives want a flat tax? Then you guys should be jumping all over it! :)

I don't want a flat tax. :)
 
That is just absurd. You're being ridiculous. Teachers range between lower middle class and middle class. It's like you live on a different planet than I do... Do you not know any teachers or something?

No, I think upper class Americans like you have no contact with the real America. The average American family have an income of 45K USD. If they got 100K USD in household income, they wouldn't know what to spend it on. I live on 10K, and I live better than many others down here. Costs here in Auckland are approximately the same as America, but wages are lower.

And right now I am talking about household income. Median personal income is 26K. But somehow, earning 90K, and 120K with compensation is not rich? Please get in touch with real America.
 
Er what? Marxism? Failing to protect property rights? Where did you get that stuff from lol?

So you are ignorant of Marx? His argument was basically private property is a man made creation and all that is real is possession. That capitalist property is nothing but theft from the masses.

You wish to destroy private property and you are treating it like theft which just so happens to be using the exact same argument as he did.
 
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Property rights is crafted out of the natural order.

So you're telling me that, say for example, the rules that say that corporate boards need to have an audit committee and that that committee be made up of "outside" directors only, the rules about how those members get selected, what responsibilities and powers that committee has, and what qualifications they need to have, are somehow naturally occurring rules that existed somewhere on a stone tablet somewhere before society wrote them down? Um... That's crazy talk.

In reality there are thousands of intricate rules that determine how power over different areas of the corporate world are distributed. The CEO (employee) gets certain powers by law, others from the corporate charter. Employees in general have some powers by law and some from corporate charters. Board members and investors are granted various powers by laws. Etc. Those are all rules humans came up with, not God or something.
 
So you're telling me that, say for example, the rules that say that corporate boards need to have an audit committee and that that committee be made up of "outside" directors only, the rules about how those members get selected, what responsibilities and powers that committee has, and what qualifications they need to have, are somehow naturally occurring rules that existed somewhere on a stone tablet somewhere before society wrote them down? Um... That's crazy talk.

Did I mention that rule? Nope.
 
No, I think upper class Americans like you have no contact with the real America. The average American family have an income of 45K USD. If they got 100K USD in household income, they wouldn't know what to spend it on. I live on 10K, and I live better than many others down here. Costs here in Auckland are approximately the same as America, but wages are lower.

And right now I am talking about household income. Median personal income is 26K. But somehow, earning 90K, and 120K with compensation is not rich? Please get in touch with real America.

Populist conservatism is just ridiculous. Get a clue. You're backing the party that is fighting tooth and nail to squeeze working class people for every penny, you're fighting against the right of working class people to negotiate more effectively for a better slice of the pie, you're complaining about teachers getting paid too much of all things... All so we can further enrich the super rich. And yet you have the audacity to come in here pretending to be a populist looking out for the little guy? Sorry, but it just doesn't pass the laugh test.
 
Did I mention that rule? Nope.

Well that rule, and thousands of others like it, are a huge part of what determines how much of the profits of corporations go to owners vs. workers.
 
Sorry but I disagree with this. There are plenty of home schooled children that do just as well, if not better than public school children scholastically speaking. And those parents don't have a teaching degree. Hell, I'm a better teacher than my sons first grade teacher. She just tried to get him to learn reading by rote instead of actually figuring out how to sound out the words. I know this because I spent a day with him in his class watching how he was doing and how the teacher was teaching.
When the student/teacher ratios get toward 1:1 - hell, even a large family at 5:1 - then you let me know and we'll have something to talk about.
 
Populist conservatism is just ridiculous. Get a clue. You're backing the party that is fighting tooth and nail to squeeze working class people for every penny, you're fighting against the right of working class people to negotiate more effectively for a better slice of the pie, you're complaining about teachers getting paid too much of all things... All so we can further enrich the super rich. And yet you have the audacity to come in here pretending to be a populist looking out for the little guy? Sorry, but it just doesn't pass the laugh test.
Am I backing the Republican Party? No, I am not.

However, I do not like public unions much. Why? Because public union workers earn substantially more than non-union workers, and demanding more. Working class Americans will end up paying, because taxing rich Americans won't bring in much revenue.

I have said it before. Republicans support rich conservatives. Democrats support rich liberals. No one is looking for the little guy, and certainly not you. Look at how Democrats have impoverished people in cities like Detroit, or states like California. Why do you think so many poor whites are voting Republican? Are they all racist? Don't you think they would have voted Democrat if they really believed Democrats care about them. Instead liberals call poor whites, white trash. That is how much rich liberals care about the poor.

If you want to help poor people with unions, then drop public sector unions for all groups earning more than US average, and work for higher unionisation rate among the working poor. Now, unions are just making themselves richer at the expense of everyone else.
 
If you want to start with the ones influencing the government that's fine with me. That's not all of them by a long shot but at least it's a beginning! :)

People influencing the government have no power over me. The government has power over me, which is why they are trying to influence the government.
 
Populist conservatism is just ridiculous. Get a clue. You're backing the party that is fighting tooth and nail to squeeze working class people for every penny, you're fighting against the right of working class people to negotiate more effectively for a better slice of the pie, you're complaining about teachers getting paid too much of all things... All so we can further enrich the super rich. And yet you have the audacity to come in here pretending to be a populist looking out for the little guy? Sorry, but it just doesn't pass the laugh test.

Talking about nonsense. Did you get all of that on MSNBC and Ed Schultz?
 
You aren't really responding to my position. Whose proceeds they are is a decision we make as a society.

When a person sells something, the proceeds are his. He owned the item, and when he sells it he then owns the proceeds. That's how our legal system works.

So when a businessman sells the inventory that he owns, why would anyone but him be entitled to the proceeds?

Are you suggesting a change to the legal system in which one does not own the proceeds from items he sells?
 
Yes, that's how our legal system works. When a person buys something, they become the owner. Are you proposing a change to this?
Let's see how much profit he makes from his property without some else's labor. :peace
 
Am I backing the Republican Party? No, I am not.

My apologies. Can I ask who you plan on voting for for president out of curiosity?

However, I do not like public unions much. Why? Because public union workers earn substantially more than non-union workers, and demanding more. Working class Americans will end up paying, because taxing rich Americans won't bring in much revenue.

That isn't true. It's just stuff that the anti-worker interests in the country say. It's just manipulation of the data. For example, that median income of $27k includes high school kids that work 6 hours a week, people who don't work at all, retirees, everybody. And that is salary, not total compensation. On the other hand, the figures you're tossing out about teachers making $120k and whatnot are ultra distorted figures that come from anti-working-class right wing lobbies. What they do is they pick a particular school district where the teachers happen to have been teaching a really long time where the cost of living is extremely high. Then they total up all compensation including questionable assumptions about the value of pensions and that sort of thing. Then they say that teachers only work 75% of the year, so they multiply the compensation by 1.33. And so forth. And then they present that as if that is what teachers actually make... And then compare it to the $27k figure... It's just trickery designed to get you riled up against working class folks.

Now, were you aware that Walker's budget that he insisted he needed to bust the unions to enact, which was supposedly about fiscal responsibility, actually increased the state deficit? He cut compensation for all the working class folks that work for the state and then he gave big businesses a tax cut that was slightly larger than the amount he took from the workers. It was just a straight up transfer of around $100 million from working class people to the rich.
 
So you are ignorant of Marx?

Loved all of his films. You cannot do better than Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly in DUCK SOUP. Great stuff.
 
Nonsense. First, private schools oddly get public money (tax dollars) in some areas. And they are selective. This means they get skewed results because there are so many schools that do not take poor perfroming students. What is better with them is the student. They offer nothing different in methodology, and often do not have teachers who are in any way better. In fact, some are quite a bit worse, as noted by them lacking credentials. MAke the students the same, and the results will be the same, if not the public schools actually doing better.

You seem to have no knowledge or understanding of either public or private schools, or the problems faced in education. This is part of the problem. Too many who know nothing keep trying to force changes that will not help. Next time your car breaks down, take it to Hairstylist, as you promote knowing what you're doing doesn't matter.

true but those of us who attended private schools and/or send our kids to private schools tend to be those with large property tax bills meaning we are paying for the education of others as well as tuition for our own kids--and guess what, I don't have a real problem with that since I have the option of sending my son to the excellent but very large public school in our prosperous town. I don't. But I don't really have a problem with some tax dollars (I don't know if they do) helping the school junior attends.

Private schools also have something public schools often do not-parents who really care. that is worth a ton when it comes to achievement test scores etc.

and thankfully, my son's school can hire those who have actually expertise in a given subject rather than wasting their time on getting the BS M Ed degrees the teachers unions demand in our public schools. Every teacher I had at that school save maybe 1-3 had masters, 2 had doctorates. My AP biology teacher had a masters in that subject from Williams. My English teacher-a Masters from Columbia, History-PhD Harvard, Math-U of Penn and so on
 
Loved all of his films. You cannot do better than Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly in DUCK SOUP. Great stuff.

that evasion is rotting in its grave.
 
Let's see how much profit he makes from his property without some else's labor. :peace

In order to produce goods to be sold, a business purchases factors of production, namely land labor and capital. The fact that one purchases inputs in order to produce products does not mean that one's inventory of finished goods belongs to anyone else.

Inventory is the exclusive property of the business. Do you dispute this? Then, when the business sells its inventory, the proceeds are the exclusive property of the business. Do you dispute this?
 
First, off. The aims of the research, and my aim wasn't the same. I was just interested in one thing. Who is richer? Right to work, or states who are not right to work. For doing that, my data is complete. RTW states are richer.

His research has the aim, does right to work benefit a state. I looked through his research, but his findings do not support his conclusion.

I have read his findings and there is no doubt that his data is solid and his conclusions are firm and true. After adjusting for cost of living, right to work states have workers earning $1,500 LESS than workers in unionized states. And their benefits are far less as well.

He is like many famous "experts", both on the left and the right, a fraud. That is how you become famous as a scientist in America.

I do not know you. But allow me to get this straight. This man is a well respected professional who travels around then nation informing people about right to work. But you label him as a fraud and say that is how you become famous.

Why should I take your word over his? Your analysis clearly does not account for the variables and differences that these major studies allowed for

In a recent Economic Policy Institute study, a pair of economists conducted a rigorous statistical analysis to measure the impact of right-to-work laws on wages and benefits (Gould and Shierholz 2011). As shown in Table 4, this analysis controlled for more than 40 different factors, including the age, race, ethnicity, gender, education, industry, occupation, urbanization, full-time status, and cost of living of workers in different states, compared with the National Institute for Labor Relations Research and Mackinac Center studies, which did not control for any factors. Thus, the EPI analysis comes as close as possible to holding “all other things equal” in measuring the impact of right-to-work laws. The authors reached the following conclusions:

Wages in right-to-work states are 3.2% lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socio-economic variables as well as state macroeconomic indicators. Using the average wage in non-RTW states as the base ($22.11), the average full-time, full-year worker in an RTW state makes about $1,500 less annually than a similar worker in a non-RTW state.
 
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When a person sells something, the proceeds are his. He owned the item, and when he sells it he then owns the proceeds. That's how our legal system works.

So when a businessman sells the inventory that he owns, why would anyone but him be entitled to the proceeds?

Are you suggesting a change to the legal system in which one does not own the proceeds from items he sells?

You're just thinking about this at a much more generalized level than what I'm talking about. Of course people should get paid for stuff they sell.

Maybe an example of the kind of rules I'm talking about would help. I worked at a number of start up and mid sized tech companies. In those situations generally it is more in the interests of the employees for the business to release realistic revenue numbers and grow steadily based on revenues, and generally it is more in the interests of the investors to produce spectacular sounding revenue figures to attract investors, shoot the value of the company up, sell it off, and then leave it to come collapsing back down once they're out with a flurry of firings and maybe a bankruptcy. Certainly not all investors want that and that isn't applicable in all companies, but it certainly is a situation that arises with some frequency. So, take just one very small rule that we as a society have to set- how are revenue numbers determined. There are lots of options. You could require that each department head signs off on a number for their department, you could require outside auditing companies to produce the numbers, you can allow them to count revenues for sales that haven't been delivered yet or not, you can have the investors elect people to come up with the numbers, you can allow them to count annual revenue streams in whatever quarter they want or you can make them even it out across the whole year, etc. Each of those choices either favors investors or workers in some way.

There are literally tens of thousands of rules like that that we as a society have set up.

My contention is that right now they are very imbalanced to favor investors and to disfavor employees. IMO that is why our income gap is exploding like it is.
 
that evasion is rotting in its grave.

You totally miss the point that traveled at least a mile above your head.

Far too many right wing warriors like to throw out the name of Marx like a parent trying to scare a four year old with tales of the Boogeyman. So when that happens, I feel it is the duty of thinking people to gently tweak the invoker of Marx a bit. Its a gentle reminder to leave the frankenstein monster on the lab table as he is not fooling anybody.
 
Loved all of his films. You cannot do better than Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly in DUCK SOUP. Great stuff.

I'll bring up the origin of nonsense if I feel like doing it. I also used him to tell the class what idea teamosil was actually talking about so it actually did serve a purpose.
 
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