Clint DeBoer said:
You are funny. Those are some of the most pleasant places to live in the US. Only a person who's never left the city would criticize places like Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alaska, etc... You're entitled to your opinion, but don't be so publicly ignorant - it's embarrassing.
I'm not funny in this post. First, as to ignorance, I've been to every one of these places except Alaska - and Alaska is not a 'typical' economic situation, it's the closest to an 'orange' amongst the apples for comparison. So, no ignorance, just ignorance from you in your mistaken assumption.
I've also been to the states topping the lists which you did not include - you cherry picked and left off Alabama, Mississippi, etc.
[Edit: So, apparently YOU can use "etc", but when
I do it it's cherry-picking. - Clint]
You have a right to your opinion, but be intellectualy honest enough not to distort the facts by excluding the ones you want to. It's embarrassing.
Now, the discussion is also not about 'pleasantness', a pretty subjective thing, but about the economics. I hate to brak the news to you, but a whole lot more people who have the money to live where they want prefer New York and California to the states in that list, and when you ask which states are more powerful economically by most measures - the relevant issue to see the effects of the topics under discussion - you see the answer.
While those states may have some 'pleasantness' to some, they are some of the most backwards economically, in spending on culture, services, etc. People have the good steaks at Peter Luger's and a Broadway show in New York, and the hash browns 'scattered, covered, etc.' at Waffle House and enjoy a drive through the endless undeveloped space looking for a bookstore or movie theatre (daring not to hope for an art film house) in the south.
My right-wing father just retired and moved from the suburbs of Los Angeles to a right-wing community named Hysperia in the desert of California, where prices are low, and he loves it as a place where people leave each other the heck alone, and the government is neigh-invisible, little government development or services, just chain stores. What can I say? It's 'pleasant' for some - but not economically wealthy from 'low unions' etc.
An ounce of common sense: higher union wages have an upwards effect on wages for others, too. One factor: they can spend more, to your pocket.
Yes, good things did arise from those movements. However, like all good ideas turned sour, people in charge lose sight of why they are there and the union becomes a parasite, sucking its members of their hard earned wages.
Here's a novel idea: Good companies don't need unions. Get the MBA-toting retards with no "shop" experience out on the floor to really see how a company is run.
There's some truth to that. Any large system, however, has some inefficiencies and corruption. You can talk all day about the 'efficiences' of the private sector, the question is whether you pay attention to the real world and recognize the inefficiencies in it, the gaming for profit, the need for various regulatory oversite to prevent the greed causing inefficient thieving behavior, etc. I already mentioned the mafia role in unions as an example too.
But as for your second statement, I think you are confusing cause and effect. What makes a company choose to act 'good'? I'm going to suggest that the unions were the way out of the huge inequality in power previously which left workers largely on poverty sustinence with no say - unions gave them the leverage such that companies had to start acting 'good', and then the cultures changed to where the unions aren't needed.
It's important to understand that, to know when they are and aren't needed, rather than to just look at the *effect* and say gee, the answer is for companies to just decide to be nice and not know how to cause it. A century ago, a company hardly had the luxury to act 'nice' when the competitor had workers in poverty working 16x6 in unsafe (i.e., low-overhead) conditions; that was not the way to make profit.
The issue today is globalization as too many workers are competing head-on with workers overseas who can live on $10 a day.
While that has some economic benefit for some consumers, and in the short term for some owners as the cash built up from the US union culture gets spent on such cheap goods, and even the public short-sightedly revels in its consumer power, and one long-term trend is helpful in the overseas markets being somewht enriched, the direction is set towards a decline for the US, from its transfer of wealth in huge trade deficits, to the borrowing our nation is doing for debt down the road for the public, and the economic benefits to the overseas markets seem to me more likely to benefit overseas businesses (including the multi-nationals who so much have bought our own political system) than the US - and that if anything, our precious democracy is somewhat endangered as nations without such democracy are made more and more powerful. In the long run, we're raising some danger to our being able to afford to keep ours, which suits big businesses who don't like the public having the power to pass laws over them pretty well.
A believe a certain governor in California tried this by actually requiring some Unions to inform their members on how their dues were being distributed to political organizations and require the members permission.
Let's look at the real issue. If you look at the issue in isolation, it doesn't look too good. So let's put it in context.
Arnold Schwarzeneggar represents corrupt big business. He's a crook. He ran on a campaign of saying he's independantly wealthy and so he doesn't need the corrupting special interest donations. He then turned around and defined only the democrats' donors as special interests and excluded all business donations, and after having criticized his predecessor democrat for taking too many donations, he is taking something like twice as much now.
On a personal level, the man went to the trouble to form a front company in Nevada to buy a plane, to avoid paying the state he loves any sales tax.
He was in with Ken Lay and Enron, one of the few who were invited to attend a special planning meeting at the height of the California crisis.
The only politcal power in CA which has been able to challenge him are the unions. For example, when Arnold took $2B from the school budgets for his own uses and promised it was just a loan, he then quietly didn't pay it back, until the teachers' union funded a tv campaign, and for the first time his poll numbers dropped, with the fundning to counter his corporate-paid PR. He went on to lose a set of initiatives, hurting him politically - and now has agreed to pay the $2B back after all as he tries to get back some political points for his upcoming election in November.
The whole union issue you mention was nothing but his attempt to de-power his main political threat and had nothing to do with 'doing the right thing'.
Annakui: the thing to keep your eye on is the short-sighted need corporations have to hit quarterly profit and growth numbers. They aren't evil, but they have to compete, and the easiest way if often harfmul to society, leaving them few choices. What we need is government leadership from the public, representing the public, pushing a big picture economic agenda to help society, as we did with FDR/Truman/Eisenhower policies that paved the way for the middle class (and everyone - this was the era when Kennedy was right to say a rising tide lifts all boats. Times have changed: since Reagan, in 25 years, the middle class has been flat in income in real dollars and losing its percent of wealth owned in huge amounts to the top 1%).
But what we have instead are the corporations buying the government who let the corporations then set the policies, and they are all too often against the public interest.
One industry needs more freedom to pollute without paying for the costs, another needs more subsidies, another needs more exceptions to pay lower wages, and so on.
Those work for the next quarter's numbers and rob the country of future wealth.
Well said, Biscokid and Panther.
