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BostonBarrister wrote:
However, w/r/t these state-employee unions, there is a New York law that forbids them from striking, because their strike is against the public interest (and their employers are essentially the taxpayers).
Professor X wrote:
And as far as any issue of whether I support a strike that puts the lives of others at risk, of course not. I do, however, think that they shouldn’t be degraded for asking for money as this goes against the way you apparently feel about oil companies…yet the majority of the posts revolve around them being “token takers” who make too much as it is. I don’t understand the double standard here. [/quote]
You must be confusing me with someone else. A double standard would require that I made the statements against which you are contrasting my position.
At any rate, the situations aren’t good comparisons. If the city is completely free to fire all the people who walk out (and I’m not sure about this - I think there are some labor laws that restrict this ability by employers, but I’m not a labor lawyer), then it’s a better comparison to a market. In a market, people can choose to consume less or not at all, or get substitute goods, or both. So if the city can fire all the walk-outs, and refuse to negotiate with them, and hire all non-union replacements, then it’s analogous. “Labor” is a very protected good.
It’s an additional problem that you have the unions negotiating against the government - represented by the taxpayer. The mayor could have just caved to the demand, snug with the knowledge that he’d never face the ill effects because it would be borne by the next generation of taxpayers who had to fund these pension demands. Stockholders and Boards are much better guardians of their own money and interests than are politicians and voters.
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BostonBarrister wrote:
I don’t like the economics of this strike, and I think the union’s position is absurd.
And, it’s illegal.
Professor X wrote:
Why do you think their position is absurd? This is honestly the part I don’t understand from you. You are FOR large businesses making as much money as possible, but god forbid a “token taker” try to get paid more and get around the system as well? When many poor people were seeing large problems from the increase in gas prices, all we heard were cheers from every one of you. Something just doesn’t make sense.[/quote]
It’s absurd from the perspective of the taxpayers who would be funding the early-retirement fixed-pension benefits that are the heart of the union’s demands. If you don’t think it’s absurd for taxpayers to subsidize 30 years of sitting around at half-pay by former public employees, please explain why not.
The fact that poor people are bearing the brunt of the problem from this strike was brought up only to contrast the ridiculousness of your and vroom’s claims that people against the strike were somehow against poor people making money.
This issue is essentially poor people vs. poor people. To the extent future tax dollars are used to fund these pensions, and then less money is left over for social services, I want to make certain you know whom to blame.
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BostonBarrister wrote:
W/r/t health insurance, I would love it for doctors to be able to band together to negotiate with the insurance companies – that makes sense from an economic perspective. However, it’s been found to violate those pesky anti-trust laws. Perhaps they should form a union instead…
Anyway, health insurance is very complex. We should start another thread on that and we can argue about whether individuals should be in control of their own policies or whether the employer-provided policies that are incented by current tax laws make sense.
Professor X wrote:
It might make a good thread, however, let’s not pretend that I haven’t brought that issue up several times before.[/quote]
When did I pretend something?