Unions, Taxes, and Class Warfare

[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?