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- May 22, 2011
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Do you think labor standards, drop the unions should be raised?
Can you articulate the question a little better? I'll answer but want to make sure I understand what you're asking.
The problem is, you know that 1950s manufacturing economy so many Trump supporters want to return to? Part of the reason there was so many low skill high paying jobs back then was due to unions.
What-caused-what back in the 1950s is highly arguable and debatable. Tax rates and unions didn't cause the postwar economic boom. The global economic environment of the 1950s allowed the entire nation to thrive, unions included, without any risk of capital flight or other adverse effects on investment or labor. Even with super high tax rates and unions that have the nation by the balls, it was still way easier to get rich here than anywhere else in the world. Thriving unions didn't create the economic environment. Outsourcing and automation were not options back then. It was the most rapid advancement of petroleum energy development the history of the world will ever see. Conditions were unique and overwhelmingly in our favor. No combination of policies can recreate that period of time. The 1950s aren't coming back. Appealing to that fantasy is an act of mass deception.
Frankly the US conservative movement is fractured, I don't think they have a good plan or defined goals in terms of these NAFTA talks.
I don't think conservatives really have a movement, and I don't think the GOP has a good plan or defined goals in terms of much of anything. There are a few positive developments the GOP could help bring about and they're dead on with a few things, but otherwise not much cohesion in their message or goals. But that doesn't make unions good, it doesn't make Right To Work "bad," it doesn't justify public sector unions, it doesn't legitimize Canada's desire for the U.S. to engage in self-harm and reinstate closed shop unionism, and it doesn't make anything that Democrats and/or liberals do or say infallible. Say what you want about the GOP and conservatives, I might agree with you, but I sling mud at the left too.
You may not like Canada's demands or tactics in these talks, but I think Canada would have a better vision of what it wants then Trump does.
Whatever Canada's vision, the stated desire for the U.S. to return to closed shop unionism is insane. So insane that I really believe it is only a stunt to turn union households back against the GOP so that Democrats retake the White House in 2020, because Canadians are quite fond of our Democratic Party. That's the reason for this nut-job "demand." Pure politics, "surface bargaining" if you will.