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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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In you last few posts, you spend more time attacking me personally than you do defending your position. How does that give credibility to your position?
If you come with arguments, then I will defend my position. However, talking about hypocrisy. Not only have you been doing personal attacks, but you have kept ignoring arguments you don't like.

Dr. Lafer and the studies he cites compare workers of like categories in union and non-union states. When they do that, they find that the unionized states worker of similar kind makes $1500 more than the non unionized worker of the same kind.
They are comparing for factors like the age of the state and unemployment rate. If you are in a state that have a household income of 60K, does your household income change if we make your state older. No? Then he is not comparing workers of like categories.

And before you start crying. I don't understand. Try to think. Ask yourself these questions.
1. Is it possible adjusting for every single factor?
2. Could trying to adjust for every single factor actually make it worse?
3. Why are there so many unrelated factors that shouldn't be adjusted for, such as unemployment and the age of the state.
4. Are all black people the same? Are all Hispanics the same? Why do the study, then assume they are the same?
5. Isn't the results very dependant on what variables you choose to correlate for?

I call that excellent research.
Of course you do. You would call any research that support your view excellent.

But if it was so excelent. Why do you keep ignoring the flaws I pointed out in his research. I reapat, and write it bold because this is the 5 time you have ignored it.
Why do you keep ignoring the flaws I pointed out in his research.

Not so easy to ignore when I make it bigger, is it?

You obviously do not approve of seeing your own intellectual prejudices exposed and made fun of in this manner. Thats okay. Few do.

The cartoon contains much truth that I have seen displayed over and over and over again through many years by those who bash both public education and the men and women who are professional educators in public education. It is an excellent cartoon and does a fine job at getting the point across.
Haha, no. The cartoon is childish. Its like you hearing Republicans say dumb ****. It doesn't hurt you. You just weep thinking about how dumb some people are.

Of course you think it is excelent. You would call any cartoon who support your view excellent. That is the kind of person you are. But Republicans have never blamed teachers for the economic crisis. Some Republicans may have stated a few of them, but unrelated to the crisis. It is just completely unrelated to the actual arguments, feeding the worst democratic stereotypes. It is actually kind of pathetic that Democrats can't make fun of the actual arguments Republicans are making. It obviously show who has the upper hand.
 
We have discussed this recently in the thread on the topic of union members not siging up for dues payments. I stated there and I will state here again that if you or anyone else interprets that as a sign that they do not want a union or they do not want union protections or they do not want the union to negotitate a contract - that is a wrong interpretation of what is going on here.

It comes down to one thing as most things do in life and that one thing is MONEY. When the right wing Repubicans passed laws to penalize and weaken unions by refusing to allow employers to collect the dues to the union, we know that some workers will see only the opportunity for a short term gain in keeping those dues for themselves and will decide to stop paying them. Many do so because of selfishness. Others do it because they fail to see the long term effects. Still others expect to have their cake and eat it too hoping that while they will keep their dues, other workers will pay and thus their own ass will be well protected by the majority.

So I do not interpret this as a sign that 2 out of 3 are opting out of the union. I see this for what it is.

1. Thank you for at least answering.

2. However, you haven't really done so - you have redirected. You have instead provided an alternate explanation for the loss of membership and money. What you haven't done is demonstrate how Public Unions will overcome these losses. Yet you voted that they will not only recover their losses, but grow stronger.

3. The next time you accuse us of hating on teachers, I think I shall recall that you claim that 1-2/3rds of them are either selfish or stupid.

As far as your claim that the limitations on unions is coming from both parties, I differ with that claim also. Yes, some democrats have joined in. But this is largely a GOP effort spurred on by their right wing. In my State of Michigan, no Democrat in the legislature has signed on these sort of extreme bills promoting things like right to work. Yes, a tiny number of Democrats have voted for laws here which unions lobbied and worked against - but they are a minority in the party and do not represent the dominant thinking of the majority. The vast majority of the Democrtic Party is supportive of labor and labor rights. Wisconsin demonstrat4es this reality also.

The breakdown seems to occur at the level where Democrats become responsible. When Democrats have had to actually put forward and pass budgets, that is where we have seen Democrats limit public unions. Nor are those breaking ranks so infinitesimally small in number as you seem to suggest.

Massachussetts Democrats have voted to strip collective bargaining by public employees on healthcare. The Democrat Governor of New York has pushed for limits on Public Sector Pensions. The Democrat Governor of Illinois moved to limit collective bargaining. Democrat Governor of Virginia banned it all-together. Democrats in New Jersey have worked with and voted for Christ Christie's reforms. Even the Democrat Governor of California has realized his state will be unable to solve it's fiscal woes until it reins in the cost of public sector unions. At the local level, Democrat Mayors and councilmen in places such as San Jose and San Diego have moved to contain the deleterious costs of public sector unions as well. Democrats all over are realizing that increasingly a suffering private sector is unwilling to support public sector workers who have greater job security, greater compensation, and lower unemployment than them to their own detriment. Even at ground zero - Wisconsin - Barrett didn't run on collective bargaining. Because that would have caused him to lose even more.

Having said that, I have no actual idea as to pubic employee unions getting stronger or weaker in the short run.

You don't think losing membership and a guaranteed protector in Democrat politicians will make them weaker?

We know there is a war on and I have no idea how it is going to turn out. Perhaps unions need to be kicked a bit to motivate and arouse apathetic members who have no memory or knowledge of why it is so important to have a union in the first place? Perhaps the union needs to do more education of its own members?

I also think that the right wing efforts against unions may bear soem fruit in the short run but in the long run will only spur unions to work harder, organize and recruit more, and dig their collective heels in deeper. And that would be a good thing.

As to economic forces, lots of Americans are not on board with globalization and the attendant sacrifices it means for them. Lots of people are simply not willing to allow unskilled workers in Asia to dictate what they will get paid here. They are not going to take this indefinetely and there will be push back as the pendulum swings too far to the right. It always does swing back. That will result in political action and perhaps we will do something extremely radical and far out like actually insist that we follow the Constitution and exercise the powers the Founders gave us to protect American markets and jobs. We will see.

In short, I think the right is riding high right now at this point in time. And I think the pendulum has swung nearly as far as its going to swing to the right. For you or anyone else to misinterpret this only does America a great disservice.

But what do you see causing it to swing back? Unions have spent massive amounts of money and seen little to no return on it. Republicans all over the country are emboldened, and many Democrats are (quietly) following suit. They've lost major, key public battles and allies. Public Unions are bleeding money and membership, and the reasons you list above indicate that it's going to be pretty difficult for them to pull off making up for that by "organizing better and recruiting more". What is the great socio-economic factor that is going to push Public Unions back on top?
 
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The cartoon contains much truth that I have seen displayed over and over and over again through many years by those who bash both public education and the men and women who are professional educators in public education. It is an excellent cartoon and does a fine job at getting the point across.

Can you cite examples of leading conservatives on this board making any of those arguments?
 
This is hilarious. You have cited an article that demonstrates my position.

:lol:
I did? Maybe you should read more than the first paragraph or two, huh? :doh

The selective factors that favored coalitionary killing of neighbors may have remained in play until as late as 1 million years ago. The precise chronology of the persistence of these selective factors during the Lower Paleolithic remains an open question at present. However, the development of the throwing spear, used in conjunction with ambush hunting techniques, ushered in an era in which the enhanced lethality of weaponry amplified the costs of assessment errors, and the necessity of movement also placed intruders at a comparative disadvantage with respect to both detection and assessment. ...

These developments marked a major turning point in the evolution of lethal intergroup violence and in the character of interrelations between neighboring groups. Although fitness continued to be related to territory size (for food-limited populations in occupied environments), selective circumstances no longer favored aggression as a means of achieving territorial gain.
Conflict avoidance and the development of intergroup relations of friendship, mutuality, sharing, and cooperation were favored instead. Intragroup cooperation was elaborated in conjunction with the teamwork entailed by large game hunting and was further reinforced by mechanisms for sharing large animals jointly killed by a hunting party. ...
In other words, for the past ~1 million years of our history - which includes the entire existence of H.sapiens and the later half of H.erectus - cooperation has been a more efficient strategy than aggression.

Only the advent of agriculture, ~10k years ago, made killing a better scheme - and, again, this is still an inter-group strategy. Even then, individuals inside a group did not kill or miam each other. Individual property rights did not exist until thousands of years after the advent of agriculture. They're a very recent and very artificial construct.
 
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I did? Maybe you should read more than the first paragraph or two, huh? :doh

In other words, for the past ~1 million years of our history - which includes the entire existence of H.sapiens and the later half of H.erectus - cooperation has been a more efficient strategy than aggression.

:lol: yeah, and the thing we cooperated most about was killing each other - armed conflict has consistently driven the formation and expansion of the heirarchy and the state. However, I would love for these people to explain to me how the Romans, Mongols, or British all ended up with massive empires through peaceful avoidance of violence. In fact our savage ancestors were more violent than we are today.

...quantitative body-counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with axemarks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own. It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But, in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. According to anthropologists like Lawrence Keeley, Stephen LeBlanc, Phillip Walker, and Bruce Knauft, these factors combine to yield population-wide rates of death in tribal warfare that dwarf those of modern times. If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million....

Hobbes got it right. Life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short, not because of a primal thirst for blood but because of the inescapable logic of anarchy. Any beings with a modicum of self-interest may be tempted to invade their neighbors to steal their resources. The resulting fear of attack will tempt the neighbors to strike first in preemptive self-defense, which will in turn tempt the first group to strike against them preemptively, and so on. This danger can be defused by a policy of deterrence—don't strike first, retaliate if struck—but, to guarantee its credibility, parties must avenge all insults and settle all scores, leading to cycles of bloody vendetta. These tragedies can be averted by a state with a monopoly on violence, because it can inflict disinterested penalties that eliminate the incentives for aggression, thereby defusing anxieties about preemptive attack and obviating the need to maintain a hair-trigger propensity for retaliation. Indeed, Eisner and Elias attribute the decline in European homicide to the transition from knightly warrior societies to the centralized governments of early modernity. And, today, violence continues to fester in zones of anarchy, such as frontier regions, failed states, collapsed empires, and territories contested by mafias, gangs, and other dealers of contraband...

Only the advent of agriculture made killing a better scheme - and, again, this is still an inter-group strategy. Individual property rights did not exist until many, many years after the advent of agriculture.

That is not true either - even an infant knows "mine".
 
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Well that's a failure of analysis then. I would love for these people to explain to me how the Romans, Mongols, or British all ended up with massive empires through peaceful avoidance of violence. In fact our savage ancestors were more violent than we are today.
You really do have a problem with reading comprehension don't you?
Did you miss "Agricultural Revolution"???


Do you honestly believe that a million years of evolution including all but the last ~5k years of our entire species existence - out of 200,000 years - can be erased by recent events?
 
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Who is saying that public unions destroyed the economy? We're just saying that they are wrecking State and Local governments' fiscs.

Agreed they are harming government budgets, but depriving citizens their Bill of Rights (e.g. right of assembling) isn't the way to go. Destroying unions isn't the answer. Finding a balance of power between managers and union employees is a better solution.
 
:) not at all - though you will note we both have a habit of editing our posts.

nope.
What I posted is not changed by your minor edit.

Now, if you'd like to discuss group ownership of land and 'production', as has been the case for most of our species history, then I'm all for it. :)
 
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from Camlon on the Dr. lafer study showing that workers in right to work states make $15,00 LESS even adjusting for cost of living than their same counterparts in union states:


Ask yourself these questions.
1. Is it possible adjusting for every single factor?
I would imagine that would be nearly impossible without infinite resources. So your answer is to adjust for none at all? That seems ridiculous on its face.


2. Could trying to adjust for every single factor actually make it worse?
Since nobody seems to be doing this, it is an irrelevant question.

3. Why are there so many unrelated factors that shouldn't be adjusted for, such as unemployment and the age of the state.

Did you write what you meant to say? Are you really asking me why factors SHOULDN'T BE ADJUSTED FOR? I do not see the point here.



4. Are all black people the same? Are all Hispanics the same? Why do the study, then assume they are the same?

It did not say ther were the same. That is your own particular false assumption. I have no doubt that ALL female high school graduates living in rural environments are not the same either. So what? People in this business group people by common categories by which they share certain characteristics and commonalities. They do not have to be the same.

5. Isn't the results very dependant on what variables you choose to correlate for

Perhaps - perhaps not. I would be glad to look at data in which you intentionally manipulate such factors but yet still produce a respected study.

Why do you keep ignoring the flaws I pointed out in his research.

It was never ignored. It was read. It was considered. It was evaluated. It was judged. And it was rejected as without merit.
 
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Can you cite examples of leading conservatives on this board making any of those arguments?

Please go back and reread my post. I was not limiting or referring to simply this board.

And NO, I will not waste hours of time doing research for you finding the obvious when you can do it yourself. If you want to arrange an hourly rate, PM me and we will discuss something.

To be quite blunt here, anyone discussing what is supposed to be wrong with public education and then denies every having anything like the positions put forth in that cartoon is simply playing ostrich or being world class disingenuous. And I strongly suspect you know that.
 
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libertarian_freedom.png

I love how the top bag makes no sense for what it is talking about, the middle bag is an oxymoron and the last one is born from partisan bull**** that has more to do with liberal ideas than anything else.

Is there a reason you are posting dumb cartoons in the place of arguments? Is there a reason you want to come off as a hack?
 
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If public sector unions are so effective, why don't workers in the private sector sign up to them?
 
I love how the top bag makes no sense for what it is talking about, the middle bag is an oxymoron and the last one is born from partisan bull**** that has more to do with liberal ideas than anything else.

Is there a reason you are posting dumb cartoons in the place of arguments? Is there a reason you want to come off as a hack?

You seem to have no sense of humor. I particularly like the last panel which I took as an homage to the dead Wicked Witch of the East from WIZARD OF OZ. ;):mrgreen:
 
from Camlon on the Dr. lafer study showing that workers in right to work states make $15,00 LESS even adjusting for cost of living than their same counterparts in union states:
And it is **** study who you are unable to defend, and who adjust for factors that shouldn't be adjusted for.

I would imagine that would be nearly impossible without infinite resources. So your answer is to adjust for none at all? That seems ridiculous on its face.
1. I think you rather should try to state your aim more clearly. My aim, is to compare household income adjusted for costs. My aim is not to compare what a potential person could earn in another state. Because that is way too difficult, and your study obviously failed doing it.

Since nobody seems to be doing this, it is an irrelevant question.
2. He tried to adjust for 40 factors. Can't adjusting for that many factors make it worse, because in all likelihood, some of them are going to be dependent variables. Or just irrelevant.

The problem is, to actually reach his aim, you need to adjust for hundreds of factors, but if you adjust for hundreds of factors, then you are going to adjust for factors that should not be adjusted for. Hence, trying to adjust for as many factors as possible, can make it worse. Instead you should refine your aim. And be very careful what you are adjusting for.

Did you write what you meant to say? Are you really asking me why factors SHOULDN'T BE ADJUSTED FOR? I do not see the point here.
3. No, I am asking you why he is adjusting for unemployment and the age of the state. If you know anything about statistics you would not know that not all variables can be adjusted for. Unemployment is clearly a dependent variable, and age of the state is just completely irrelevant.

It did not say ther were the same. That is your own particular false assumption. I have no doubt that ALL female high school graduates living in rural environments are not the same either. So what? People in this business group people by common categories by which they share certain characteristics and commonalities. They do not have to be the same.
4. The point is, you can not expect all people of one race to be the same. You can not expect Texas Hispanics to have the same income potential as Florida Hispanics. That is one of the reasons your study is so flawed.

Your counterexample is flawed. If you prove it to be true, you are just making his study even more flawed.

Perhaps - perhaps not. I would be glad to look at data in which you intentionally manipulate such factors but yet still produce a respected study.
5. The difference in results is quite small. I think it is easy to tip it the other way. For instance umployment rate is clearly higher in non right to work states if you adjust for population. Removing the dependent variable unemployment should be enough to tip it the other way.

You really need to stop believing blindly in studies, just because they support your view. Especially from partisan people who want to reach a certain conclusion before they even start.


It was never ignored. It was read. It was considered. It was evaluated. It was judged. And it was rejected as without merit.
It was never ignored, just not responded to 5 times? How does that make logical sense? Only when I made it bold, and 5 doubled the text size. Then you responded.

And what was your response. "I disagree, but I am unable to explain why". I think that should say enough.
 
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We will agree to disagree.

I feel that Dr. Lafer and the studies he cites are first rate pieces of research. I gave you reasons why and I gave you the reasons why I faulted your approach. I did explain why but apparently you wanted something more...................... exactly constituting what I do not know since I already explained my position quite clearly.

What you see as "flaws" - for example comparing Texas Hispanics with Florida Hispanics - I do not see as a flaw at all. We both agree that no people are identical so its silly for you to keep beating tht drum as it is making no noise at all.

You ask me to speak for Dr. Lafer and for the studies he cites when I clearly am not him. You want to have me explain to you the reasons behind his methodology and that is simply not available to me. That is not a weakness or a flaw - it is just the way it is.
 
What I posted is not changed by your minor edit.

Now, if you'd like to discuss group ownership of land and 'production', as has been the case for most of our species history, then I'm all for it. :)

:) Man, I have neither the time nor the inclination to go down that rabbit hole and explain why Rousseau was a fool on a thread about public union survival. I'll give it to you by default. :)
 
If public sector unions are so effective, why don't workers in the private sector sign up to them?

Private Sector unions face restrictions that Public ones do not, which hampers their extractive capabilities.
 
Please go back and reread my post. I was not limiting or referring to simply this board.

And NO, I will not waste hours of time doing research for you finding the obvious when you can do it yourself. If you want to arrange an hourly rate, PM me and we will discuss something.


Okay, well if you don't want to go to that much effort to back up your claim, I'll narrow the sample for you. Catawba posted the cartoon in this thread - clearly he felt this was where it fell into the discussion. Can you cite a single person on this thread arguing that teachers caused the fiscal collapse?

To be quite blunt here, anyone discussing what is supposed to be wrong with public education and then denies every having anything like the positions put forth in that cartoon is simply playing ostrich or being world class disingenuous. And I strongly suspect you know that.

I have never put forth the claim that any of those things caused the Great Recession. Nor have I seen any conservatives do so.
 
I feel that Dr. Lafer and the studies he cites are first rate pieces of research.
You would say any research that supports your view is first rate. That is the kind of person you are.

I gave you reasons why and I gave you the reasons why I faulted your approach. I did explain why but apparently you wanted something more...................... exactly constituting what I do not know since I already explained my position quite clearly.
Liar, you never responded at all. I pointed that out 5 times, and you didn't even say a word. The only time you responded was when I made it bold and increased the size by 5 times, then you couldn't ignore it. If you really responded, then quote yourself. Problem is, you never did respond, so there is nothing to quote.

If in case your memory is lacking. We are talking about the flaws I found in the study such as his cherrypicking or how he state the data do not show a correlation when it certainly does.

What you see as "flaws" - for example comparing Texas Hispanics with Florida Hispanics - I do not see as a flaw at all. We both agree that no people are identical so its silly for you to keep beating tht drum as it is making no noise at all.
Of course you don't. You will never see a flaw in any study that support your view. That is the kind of person you are. Fact is, the study assumes all black, all white, all hispanics are the same. They all have the same income potential. That is completly incorrect, and obviously reading from your responses you are completely unable to respond to it. You disagree, care to explain why.

You ask me to speak for Dr. Lafer and for the studies he cites when I clearly am not him. You want to have me explain to you the reasons behind his methodology and that is simply not available to me. That is not a weakness or a flaw - it is just the way it is.
Ok, so you don't want to defend his research, because you do not know his methodology, but you expect me to take every word he says as the truth.

If you want to use his research as an argument, then you need to be able to defend it. Don't mention research you are unable to defend.
 
Okay, well if you don't want to go to that much effort to back up your claim, I'll narrow the sample for you. Catawba posted the cartoon in this thread - clearly he felt this was where it fell into the discussion. Can you cite a single person on this thread arguing that teachers caused the fiscal collapse?

If that is your sole interpretation of the illustration - it is not mine.
 
You would say any research that supports your view is first rate. That is the kind of person you are.

I am NOT Dr. Lafer.
I did NOT conduct his research nor the research he cited.

I simply have read it, have heard him present it, have decided it is first class and makes sense and proves the point that unionstates are far superior to non union states.
There is nothing more for me to say.
 
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I am NOT Dr. Lafer.
I did NOT conduct his research nor the research he cited.

I simply have read it, have heard him present it, have decided it is first class and makes sense and proves the point that unionstates are far superior to non union states.
There is nothing more for me to say.
Haymarket, we all know that you think non-RTW states such as California are far superiour to RTW states. That is your personal preference. You can also believe his research, and I can't make you stop believing it.

However, if you want me to accept his conclusions, then you need to defend his research. As you are not defending it, then please don't mention it again because it got no credibility.

I have still proved that RTW states have a higher household income than non-RTW states. So right to work states have the right to work for more.
 
Talking about growth rates. Your professor said there was no correlation between growth rates, employment growth and RTW laws. However, these charts tells another story

hohmanRTW-chart2.jpg

110630-rtw.gif
 
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