Perhaps so, just not from people that propose more taxes and don't pay them here.

No I told you how easy it was/is to claim PTSD and that half of Canada could probably claim the same symptoms. I'm skeptical of your numbers. Say RAND, RAND, RAND as much as you want, but did they review each claim? I doubt it. There is this little thing unfortunately call fraud, and sadly, I'm sure their are people abusing the system. How many, I don't know, and neither do you, or RAND. The screening, from what I've seen is a joke. But, I never suggested there ain't people that actually suffer from it. That's just a little something you added to try and validate your point.

Ask him to get up to the front, then he will be able to tell you exactly what I'm talking about. For some reason they don't send the "causalities" I referred to, back stateside to a VA hospital. BTW glad it is only temporary for your brother. I heard about that town in Canada that has a lottery to see a doctor, sounds like they could use some help there. Here is the video clip covering Norwood, Ontario LINK. We'll discuss it more when we solve Canada's problems OK?

Ok, fair. My bad on the word "choose". So instead of mincing words why don't you just tell me why there are no unions at the foreign automakers stateside? They love em so much at home, they should be aggressively pushing for them here right? I guess the workers love working for less or are slaves to the company and don't want the union to rescue them. Thanks again for breaking it to me...I get it, your all about mis-direction.

What a relief! Thank you. BTW it that the same farce media and/or controlling corporate state where you seem to get a lot of your information from? Just curious, since you like to quote/reference its institutions.

Now are you going to defend your OP or is that idea so moronic that you're relieved to be off topic?

What about France? It suffers routinely from strikes in numerous industries. Unions can have a positive influence if they work to make the company better (which benefits them by making their futures more secure), but can also be a negative influence if they try and force their wages up above the market rate, and/or strike+use other similar actions to try and blackmail the company into giving them what they want.

Unions are a form of monopoly and are hence specifically exempted from anti-trust law. Their only purpose is to monopolise labour and hence drive prices for labour above the level they would be in a market without such monopoly power.

Again we agree. Boeing got fed up with the 6 recent strikes by the machinist union and is moving production of its newest production line to South Carolina sans union. So what did some of the best paid workers in the US accomplish? That they can alienate themselves from management and lose future employment? Boeing will consider moving the more resources in the future as older aircraft production lines shut down.

Unions had their place in time, but now laws have caught up and in some cases surpassed them. Washington states loss is SC's gain though. Some people support the governments redistribution of wealth yet get upset when a company does it.

Ahh yes, the famous "unions push wages above the market rates and therefore kill both themselves and their employer"

This argument is an oldie but a goldie. You want to know a funny statistic? Adjusted for inflation, in what year did the average North American worker bring in the most money?

The answer, is 1973. Since 1973, thanks to things like inflation, rising cost of living and so forth, wages actually stagnated and then dropped. Think about that for a second. Back in the early 70's, (on average) one income was sufficient to support a family and home. Now, that is not the case. Pound for pound, the money pulled in by what could be called "the middle class" has been shrinking and shrinking. What was the answer to this? Credit and debt!

Since folks no longer had enough hard currency, everyone went to credit cards. Most recently, we had the criminal banks tell us that our houses were 'like a bank' and convinced folks to refinance. When folks couldn't pay their bills, this resulted in the banks repossessing homes that some families had previously owned outright for decades. But let's nevermind that.

So why did the big change come about in the 70's?

A couple of reasons:

1) The government lied outright when it went off the gold standard and moved to a fiat currency (hello Bretton woods)

2) Unions were blamed as the bad guys for all sorts of evils, and a long slow process began which was cemented by ol' Ronnie Reagan with the air traffic controller's strike. In the public discussion, unions have been tarred as protecting lazy incompetent workers who want a free handout and a killer of business.

What happened? The unions shrunk to a tiny sliver of the workforce yet all kinds of nasty economic problems remain, what with the near 20% real unemployment rate you now face.

Meanwhile, those workers who have remained unionized, and were lucky enough not to have their jobs outsourced to Mexico or Thailand, have actually merely been pushing for a living wage, that adjusted for inflation is middle of the road. While the rich have been getting richer, the guy in the middle asking for his piece of the pie has apparently become tabboo, and so his job must be shipped overseas in the name of free markets!

I'm a unionized worker for a profitable company, but I can guarantee you that if we weren't unionized myself and my colleagues would probably take home much less than we do now while the executive and board of directors would be giving themselves a nice fat bonus for "a job well done"!

Well to be honest, you'd have to ask the workers in those factories why they decided not to unionize.... they are free to at any time.

But then again, as I stated earlier, unionized labor is only 10 % of your work force and has been on the decline for decades.... the auto sector is one of the few last "holdouts" and once that goes, your economy will still be shit, all of your high-end jobs will still be outsourced but you won't have the ebil unions (whom you can thank for things like the weekend) to blame! (My point, in case you haven't noticed, is that a disproportionate amount of your problems have been pinned on a tiny segment of your economy)

Well, here's the thing Nitro- those workers in South Carolina have every right and availability to unionize, so Boeing has -temporarily- gotten it's production line into non-union labor. If the folks in S.C vote to unionize, then Boeing will eventually have to move it's production out of the country, oh wait, that's already happened to the vast majority of your entire industrial base!

Source please.

Come on you can do better than that! You're a smart guy, right? Surely these workers want the highest pay and benefits they can get, just like the workers in Japan an German auto plants, right?

Or maybe they just see how the UAW has destroyed jobs for tens of thousands and want no part of it. Oh there is a reason for the decline of the unions. It's because the workers are making a choice.

My mom was seamstress for about 31 years, under the ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union) once the largest union in the US, and retired in 93. She paid her dues each week and now reaps the benefit, $50 a month, and she had to petition to New York City to get it. All the little knitting mills in the area of PA where she lived dried up. My mom liked the union, they used to get "free" vaccinations out for the workers kids and even paid them $10 a day when they went on strike. By the mid 70's all those little perks were gone, but not the dues. The union rep didn't have it so bad. They cleared $500 a week take home pay in the 60's. What happened to that union? Like rats on a sinking ship, they merged with other unions, and now represent hotel and restaurant employees. Onto a new ponzi scheme.

If their smart and they take a short history lesson, they will see how Washington State unionized themselves right out of a job. So how will unions keep jobs in the US when they can't even keep jobs for their members?

My apologies, have been away for a few days-

Nitro, this truly does illustrate how little you actually understand about Unions.

-IF- the workers of a Toyota plant voted to unionize, that doesn't necessarily mean they would instantly become part of the UAW.

More likely, what would happen is they would be approached by the UAW who would say "hey, we've got lots of experience with this stuff, join us and we can help you out"

and again, the decision would be up to the workers whether or not they wanted to become part of the UAW. Becoming a part of a union doesn't necessarily mean that the workers automatically become sworn enemies of management, but instead that the workers of a business are bargaining for the value of their labor -collectively- rather than individually. Again, all of these foreign companies that are kicking GM and Ford in the teeth, are 100% unionized in their countries. Why? Because the workers in those plants voted for it.

Oh, and one othere little tidbit. One of the major reasons why Ford and GM have been hurting so bad is that they now have millions of retirees that the company is responsible for providing healthcare and retirement benefits. Their overseas competitors? They don't have to worry about that, except of course for their workers in American plants. The reason being, is that Germany and Japan both have a form of universal healthcare that takes care of that. Meanwhile, Ford and GM are left holding the bag for a sum (now in the billions of dollars) each year to take care of their retired workforce.

This is a moot point as I've already stated. Only 10% of your workforce remains unionized and yet your economy is still shit. Going by the logic that all of the problems can be blamed on lazy, greedy workers wanting too much of the pie, once the unions are all gone then things should get better right?

WRONG!

South America is a perfect example of what you've got waiting in store. Most nations in south America were laboratories for Friedman economics which is where you'll be very soon. At the behest of the Chicago school of economics, these nations essentially broke their unions (quite often with military force), then privatized and de-regulated their entire economy (except of course for the military)

Once this happened, in virtually all cases 1% of the population lived like gods, another 10-20% lived decently (all the doctors, lawyers and engineers that you need to keep a society running) then you get a pretty small middle class and then nearly 50% of the population live in slums, as completely disposable human beings good for replacable labor in whatever banana mill the top dogs see fit to open with their vast wealth. And so it goes. And so it will go for the people of the U.S and A!

LOL It doesn't take much to understand these workers don't want unions. Your half-baked response truly illustrates your level of knowledge. Let me provide a LINK to the answer you are unable or unwilling to give.

Yeah, truly some sweet pension plans from the early days of the UAW. Things like 100% pensions (with cost of living increases), "Cadillac (no pun intended) medical plans, etc.  Foreign companies, Asia specifically (Europe has the socialized thing down pat), that paid a pittance of a salary, and let the state provide retirement and health care, until recent years won't see big problems for a few more years. US workers will soon have a choice: pay into their company retirement plan as well as the UHC plan or take the gubment plan (three, if you count the fine and/or imprisonment). Great choices, pay twice or take the "Yugo" plan (pun intended). Either way, what a deal. Oh that's right liberals and socialists think the government pays for that with their money LOL.

Nobody said that, nor was it implied. You, a obvious union fanboy, while acknowledging unions are decreasing, trumpeted the praises of the unions (How awesome they are in Japan and Germany). I asked you why they aren't growing in the US if they are so wonderful. You skirted my question with some irrelevant babble. All I suggested was their time has come and gone. They no longer have the interest of the worker, just their own bottom line. They have effectively became what they fought against. My opinion you don't have to like it.

This rotting corpse of an article, about creating a new tax, is really boring me (and judging from the lack of interest, others as well). It should have died a natural death after post 14. Instead, I humored your tirade on various topics much longer than politely reasonable. I'll let someone else play if they are the least bit interested or you can finish with some cleaver insight or remark.

Okay Mr. Cranky Pants!

No one is forcing you to post in this thread, last I checked. I do however, find it terribly entertaining when you hurl invective my way, so please do continue. No one was asking you to 'humor' my tirade, as last I checked this particular page happens to be my blog, and I am merely responding to comments posted. 'ats all.

I acknowledged that Unions are decreasing in North America my good fellow, not the world over. In regards to why they aren't growing in the U.S, there is no quick and dirty answer but the real decline started under Reagan and has continued since (they've died a very slow death)

And, as the unions have declined, what has happened? The per capita income of CEO's has gone up several hundred times, whereas the income of middle-class households, adjusted for inflation has stagnated and even decreased since the mid-70's.

In addition, while the unionized work-force has continued to shrink, so too has your manufacturing base continued to be outsourced overseas, which doesn't lend much creedence to the lazy, greedy worker argument.

One thing I might like to add, is that when I've been in the States for work I've encountered a very heavy anti-union environment with my American counterparts. For example, I was in Boston last november during the election and was working with several folks from all over the States. When I mentioned that I was a member of Union, you could have heard a pin drop!

All of them, every single one, had never been a part of a union and had had it drilled into their heads through years of talk radio and the like that Unions were lazy and killed business. It was like they had seen a martian, or a ghost, and as I explained to them how unions actually work they were almost dumb-founded that the things I was saying were largely contradicting much of the propaganda they had been spoon-fed for much of their lives. So it could very well be that many U.S workers have not been properly educated about what Unionizing means!