Unions: Messing Up The Economy Since the Great Depression
Two tidbits on unions and the economy.
First, unionization prolongs bad times (e.g., the Great Depression) by forcing business to retain less efficient, though more senior, employees and pay unequally talented people equally, resulting in layoffs.
Second, union demanded and legislatively provided state pensions (constitutionally guaranteed in New York), funded almost exclusively by taxpayers, are hemorrhaging dollars. Unlike private 401(k)s, however, taxpayers are on the hook for the risk, and share little if any of the rewards. Enjoy making up the difference in the government pensions’ shortfall, sucker. Do you really think the government’s going to make up your 401(k)’s losses?
Unions have both caused real harms and provided significant benefits. Currently, the harms are outweighing the benefits. Name one major public sector union that’s addressed a truly dangerous workplace condition in the last ten years. Teachers? Nope. Government desk jockeys? Nope. Heck, even firemen and policemen have as good working conditions as their inherently dangerous jobs permit.
Again, what do public sector unions do except, at the point of the government employer’s gun, redistribute wealth from the unwilling taxpayer to the union members?
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.