Unions, Taxes, and Class Warfare

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Aristotle
1) You don't get to just magically "separate" from this argument people who don't work hard, waste their money on booze, drugs, or cigarettes, or any other 90000 reasons people fail to get ahead in life.

It is a FACT of our society that if you want to get ahead, you can.

If you think someone else owes you a duty to help you get ahead, you are mistaken. If you think the government has a duty to guarantee you better wages than you can earn on your own merits, you are not only delusional, but doomed to fail.

Well, all this is true but my own personal position on them has continually been union based, and I have continually stated I am not interested in social programs to pay people who demonstrate a lack of initiative or personal responsibility. I Do have a good deal of sympathy who sink into depression due to work issues, but here again I think any government help offered would have to be outcome oriented, subject to being cut off if minimum standards were not kept up.

Unions though are specifically all about working people who HAVE jobs and all about a solution that is uniquely non-governmental, other than the protection of the right to organize at all.

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Jidoe
The problem with your statement, and perhaps I didn't point it out in my previous posts, is that construction workers earn a pretty damn good salary (much much much more than minimum wage) and if one could possibly work in this field for a very long time (which is almost impossible because it completely wears your body up) you could live a very nice life with every luxury you want or need.

And that's where being spoiled comes into... people aren't willing to do hard, physical jobs nowadays, even when they have great income and I'm going to join Ari here, if you want to work hard, you will eventually make more money. The problem nowadays is that almost everyone is looking for easy solutions and easy ways to make money (lotteries are the best example) but it rarely ever works this way and eventually, it is up to the person to decide what he wants in his life.

Well, that is indeed outside my experience. I was in the Navy when I visited Israel, not there working contruction. I would be surprised if it were true on a wide scale though.

Here in Texas there are a plethora of people that work hard labor for years on end. My foreman, Terry Root, back when I was a carpenter, had been working for 10+ years and had no plans on stopping anytime soon. I can't recal if the company was a partnership or was owned entirely by John Bergeron, who was the one that hired me, but John had been in construction all his life, had cut off one of his fingers with a circular saw, was a ragun cajun with the accent to match and very much a larger than life sort of character.

I remember me and Terry were puttering around with a hammer and chisel trying to clear out a hole that a bolt was supposed to go through on a main support beam. Bergeron bellows, "OUT OF THE WAY!" I look up and he is RUNNING at us with a sledgehammer!!! Well, the bolt was set in the hole and we had just been trying to hammer it on through and he WOLLOPED it, busting it through with a big grin on his face.

He was a fun fellow to work for.

Oh yes... He once walked up to me and just out of the blue said, "Shane, you know what a carpenter and a hooker have in common?" I shrugged and said no... "If they don't put out, they don't make any money."

I think that was his way of telling me to get busy....

Anyhow, here in Texas there are plenty of people who work construction all their lives, for whatever that's worth to yas.

[Jidoe]

I think that what just wrote above is the reason why there aren't many people who work in this field for decades

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Jidoe
I think that what just wrote above is the reason why there aren't many people who work in this field for decades

It's definitely a profession that puts hair on your chest, so to speak.

Like I said though, I have a hard time believing that if you can make a living at it, people are unwilling to do it. What it means is that it turns out to be work that is worth more money than people want to say. "Oh, anyone can do that." Yeah, sure, you don't need a Phd to swing a hammer, but you DO need at least some basic math skills and even a touch of trig to do slopes and stairs and such correctly.

That's why when I saw really really good plumbing work being done by Mexicans for chump change it really shocked me. We were out in the sun digging a hole down to the city sewer main one day. The hole is so deep that a man disappears inside, and it's not really all that good an idea to use a machine for anything other than the beginning of it because you don't really know EXACTLY where the main is, and you don't want to punch a big giant hole in it either. So we are taking turns digging. It's the heat of the afternoon, Houston clay is thick and heavy, and you're throwing this gumbo up over your head a couple of feet. Then I remembered how when I was a kid I would drive by people where a bunch of guys were standing around while one guy was digging and roll my eyes and make a smarmy comment about it as laziness.

You try it.

Thing is, sure work is whatever the market says its worth, but there are ways and ways of changing the percieved worth of anything. It keeps being tossed around that unions are somehow magically "external", but nothing is being said about all the dozens and dozens of "external" factors that work in favor of the business owner, starting with, well, not to sound like a Malacastist, but, capital. Money is artificial!

So there's all sorts of artificial pieces of the puzzle, but the bottom line is people deserve a certain degree of equality and freedom, and it just turns out that in an economy where money is used, money = power, which means it is the tool one needs to be free and equal.

So we use whatever means are at our disposal not to allow the few run too far out in front of the many. This is soooo wrong why?