But let’s ask for a moment what would have happened if Hostess had been a non-union company. Judging from the commentary, you would think that out there in the real world, 30% pay cuts are the norm and people just suck it up. In reality, nominal pay cuts are rare. This is a well-known phenomenon in economics: it’s called downward nominal wage rigidity. Companies rarely impose actual reductions in the dollar amounts of pay for existing workers. In the most reliable studies, using company payroll records, about 2%-3% of workers experience a pay cut each year. Data from national surveys are notoriously prone to measurement error, but after correcting for it, 4%-5% of workers are observed experiencing falling wages.

In 1999, the Yale economist Truman Bewley published a famous book called Why Wages Don’t Fall During a Recession, in which he took the revolutionary step, for an economist, of actually going out and interviewing people. It’s a fascinating book for many reasons, but the main thing Bewley was trying to learn was why, in flagrant defiance of economics textbooks, employers lay off workers in recessions, when the textbooks clearly state that they should simply cut their pay instead. He talked to hundreds of employers around Connecticut about how they decide on pay and staffing policies.

Bewley summarized what he found this way: “All employers thought cutting the pay of existing employees would cause problems. The main argument was that employee reactions would cost the firm more money than a pay cut would save, so that it would be profitable only if workers accepted it.”

What we have here is a situation where a company offered a wage in the marketplace and couldn’t get any workers to accept it. Consequently, it went out of business. The word “competitive” gets thrown around a lot, often with the murkiest of meanings, but in this case there can be no doubt at all that a company, Hostess, was unable to pay a competitive wage. Ninety-two percent of its workers voted to walk out on their jobs rather than accept its wage, and they stayed out even after they were told it was the company’s final offer.

By all the canons of competitiveness, it was the company that was deluded. Hey, it’s a tough labor market out there. Hostess just couldn’t compete.

But the union got blamed instead, and that points to a fascinating aporia in neoliberalism. The competitiveness ideology keeps a double set of books. On the surface, it celebrates free individuals making voluntary agreements on a footing of formal equality. But look just a little deeper and it turns out to be a musty, medieval system of morality that venerates human hierarchy and inequality. If taken literally, an accusation of insufficient “competitiveness” would refer to a failure to buy or sell on the terms objectively demanded by the dispersed actors of the marketplace. But nine times out of ten, this literal meaning is just a facade for the real underlying meaning, which is all about policing the socially accepted rules concerning who is a worthy human being and who is not. Workers at an industrial bakery are losers. They need to take a pay cut — not so much to make the numbers add up (that’s a secondary consideration for all the commentators and columnists) but as a ritual affirmation of their debased social status. The refusal to take the cut was shocking and revolting — an act of lèse-majesté. It’s in that sense that the union was uncompetitive. The workers didn’t know their place.

So are there really good deals or something on "Black Friday"?

Wow - never saw this coming. Saxby Chambliss - "I care more about the country than a 20 year old tax pledge"

Though dressed up in the modernist garb of hard-headed science, it's really about a pre-modern vision of the righteous inequality of humanity.

This is a really good summary of Ray's position on the last page. Though dressed up in the modernist garb of hard-headed science, it's really about a pre-modern vision of the righteous inequality of humanity. The moral order that flows from the natural inequality of humans requires the lesser to know their place and not advocate against their betters.

This is very Gen X and before type thinking. Newer generations are starting to view work differently than Gen X'ers and before. ... [a whole bunch of stuff] ... We'll see what happens in 10 or so years when they start to have families whether or not they keep this up but right now is a great time to be a drone.

I haven't really been arguing statistics, just trying to prod the opponents to seriously look at places like Switzerland or Hong Kong or Singapore.

Black Friday is for suckers.
Cyber Monday is the real deal.

2000/2001-Present - New Silent Generation or Generation Z
1980-2000 - Millennials or Generation Y
1965-1979 - Generation X
1946-1964 - Baby Boom
1925-1945 - Silent Generation
1900-1924 - G.I. Generation

This is a really good summary of Ray's position on the last page. Though dressed up in the modernist garb of hard-headed science, it's really about a pre-modern vision of the righteous inequality of humanity. The moral order that flows from the natural inequality of humans requires the lesser to know their place and not advocate against their betters.

But nine times out of ten, this literal meaning is just a facade for the real underlying meaning, which is all about policing the socially accepted rules concerning who is a worthy human being and who is not. Workers at an industrial bakery are losers. They need to take a pay cut — not so much to make the numbers add up (that’s a secondary consideration for all the commentators and columnists) but as a ritual affirmation of their debased social status. The refusal to take the cut was shocking and revolting — an act of lèse-majesté. It’s in that sense that the union was uncompetitive. The workers didn’t know their place.

If a worker ultimately doesn't like the job, he or she can quit.

Slavery doesn't exist anymore, so pretending that workers don't have options, and that big bad employers hold all the cards, is deluded. If a worker ultimately doesn't like the job, he or she can quit.

Well, unless you think that public opinion is never a market factor in setting wages and working conditions, or unless you think that workers should unilaterally disarm themselves in trying to shape public opinion, then that position is itself BS.

All better options than publicly "agitating"

When they do that and can't find another job (remember the 23million unemployed!)

and are then on some form of government assistance to make sure they don't starve or lose their homes, someone starts trumpeting about how they are "takers" and are given "gifts" to vote for the guy that doesn't remind them of the evil CEO who ###### them over...

If they don't like what's being offered, say so internally, or quit. Find a new job; go into business for yourself; go to school or go back to school; move; change professions. All better options than publicly "agitating" because your employer wants you to... Rob banks? Hold customers up in the parking lot? Sell yourself into the sex trade? No. To work off hours on a holiday.

Hmm. Sounds similar to how Obama and the leftists tell everyone to "live the American dream, you can make it here" - and then when the person becomes successful he is scorned and treated as a selfish prick who hasn't given his fair share.

Hmm. Sounds similar to how Obama and the leftists tell everyone to "live the American dream, you can make it here" - and then when the person becomes successful he is scorned and treated as a selfish prick who hasn't given his fair share.

Also, can you point to a statement that Obama made that scorned successful or wealthy people?

Saying that wealthy people should bear a higher proportionate tax burden is not scorning them.

All better options than publicly "agitating" because your employer wants you to work off-hours on a holiday

then when the person becomes successful he is scorned and treated as a selfish prick who hasn't given his fair share.

No, of course he's not going to say "These people deserve our scorn!" But his message is clear, and his followers aren't shy in saying it. Cite: the last several years of political discussions here on BTF.

No, of course he's not going to say "These people deserve our scorn!" But his message is clear, and his followers aren't shy in saying it.

I am not sure that this is the stongest evidence. There is a bias towards the status quo.

The idea that unions are bad because they advocate living wages and thereby ruin industries is weird.

So anyone who thinks that people who make more money than 250,000 should pay a higher rate than 35% is scorning the wealthy?

Saying that wealthy people should bear a higher proportionate tax burden is not scorning them.



Done and done.

No, of course he's not going to say "These people deserve our scorn!" But his message is clear, and his followers aren't shy in saying it. Cite: the last several years of political discussions here on BTF.

Done and done.

No, of course he's not going to say "These people deserve our scorn!" But his message is clear, and his followers aren't shy in saying it.

Since 23 million unemployed leaves a gaggle of people employed, that means there are plenty of jobs out there. It is not impossible to become employed, as a great many people show.

...at least nine of whom are almost guaranteed to hate Walmart.

Wow - never saw this coming. Saxby Chambliss - "I care more about the country than a 20 year old tax pledge"

If Norquist can't hold the Chambliss' of the world, he's finished.

Just to add my personal experience with nationalized health care - I just came back from Taiwan. I went to a dermatologist clinic for a skin condition (duh). I am not a Taiwanese citizen, but got an appointment a couple days prior without a problem. Saw a dermatologist for about 15 minutes, got a weeks worth of two drugs and two tubes of topical drugs. Total cost was $24 (American) and was all accomplished in about an hour - this included registration, taking my weight and blood pressure, doctors consultation and all four prescriptions filled.

"Walmart has done more for to create poor people than any ten liberals, at least nine of whom are almost guaranteed to hate Walmart."

— Thomas Sowell

"Walmart has done more for poor people than any ten liberals,

"Walmart has done more for poor people than any ten liberals, at least nine of whom are almost guaranteed to hate Walmart."

— Thomas Sowell

The only explanation I can think of is that once he got picked up by the right wing think tanks, his opinions have become more and more narrowcast over the years, as he keeps himself firmly within their bubble.

I dunno, I'm almost as cynical as you are about these characters, but unlike a clown like Coulter, Sowell actually has written some worthwhile books, and didn't begin by being a schtick artist.

And it's not a universal pattern, either. Buckley and Goldwater got saner as they aged, others like Frum remain conservative but independent of faction, and writers like Brooks and Gerson don't engage in the sort of unhinged rhetoric that guys like Krauthammer and Will do. Much as it may seem from the outside sometimes, they're not really all alike.

That only happened within the last 15 years, believe it or not.

Only within the last 15 years? Like it was only yesterday that for one brief shining moment she showed she had a brain, and the continuing dumbassness of the last 15 years can be waved away like an insignificant gnat.

So let us say that theoretically you could buy a $20 lawnchair and have it last a decade. How many Americans do you think that would employ if you only had to buy a chair once every ten years?

This is where political discussions get silly. Cheap shots like this designed to marginalize the speaker. I was responding to Andy's comment that Coulter "didn't begin by being a schtick artist." Go scratch, Morty.

No, they begin silly when someone attempts to defend the indefensible because of some extreme outlier moment that has no bearing as to the person in question's present standing. Who knows and who gives a #### whether Coutler was level-headed years ago for one ephemeral moment? Well, you do because you will go to absurd lengths to defend the indefensible irrelevantly.

Can someone help here?

I support Ray's position on Morty.

As I and others have said the notion that foreign cheap goods are shoddy and that somehow American made goods are superior is comically wrong.

Yep, America the land of the safe products.