labor unions should transform to producers' ownership unions

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/labor-unions-should-transform-producers-ownership-unions-1394290175

Recently there have been numerous articles addressing the scope of problems related to our dependency on job creation as the ONLY source of income and a wanting reliance on labor unions to realize that end. But universally, the authors are oblivious to the non-job-dependent solution. Simply increasing wage levels and extending jobless benefits once again won’t solve the problem of long-term unemployment and underemployment, and the diminishing impact income losses have on the long-term productive capacity of the United States economy.

The common thread of articles that address unemployment and underemployment are solutions that would build an American society of dependent citizens on tax extraction and national debt to provide social insurance to replace wages lost through unemployment and underemployment.

The labor union movement traditionally played the role of protecting worker interests in terms of job security, wage levels, working conditions, and social insurance benefits. Yet union leaders have been experiencing a steady deterioration of support for unionization principally because of the uncertainties that corporate owners/employers will eliminate their jobs and replace them with more efficient, less costly technologies.

As a result, the trend has been to diminish the importance of employment with productive capital ownership concentrating faster than ever, while technological change makes physical capital ever more productive. Technology is an easier and faster way to get a job done. Because technology increases the profitability of companies throughout the world, technology always has the advantage over human labor when the costs of them are the same. But because this is not well understood, what we as a society have been doing is to continually shift the work burden from people labor to real physical capital while distributing the earning capacity of physical capital's work (via capital ownership of stock in corporations) to non-owners through jobs, minimum wage, and social insurance welfare programs. Such policies do not function effectively.

[handmade34]

1. excellent..

Important >> "... what we as a society have been doing is to continually shift the work burden from people labor to real physical capital while distributing the earning capacity of physical capital's work (via capital ownership of stock in corporations) to non-owners through jobs, minimum wage, and social insurance welfare programs. Such policies do not function effectively...

...If we continue with the past’s unworkable trickle-down economic policies, governments will have to continue to use the coercive power of taxation to redistribute income that is made by people who earn it and give it to those who need it. This results in ever deepening massive debt on local, state, and national government levels, which leads to the citizenry becoming parasites instead of enabling people to become productive in the way that products and services are actually produced..."



I am fortunate to work for an ESOP company... employee owned/controlled is best for almost everyone

[xchrom]

2. kick