| Mr Puggsly said:
No unions left you say? Good. I'm glad to hear that. They've done enough damage. |
Anyone who would say that...
a) doesn't have any idea what they're talking about.
b) wants their nation to be totalitarian.
Unions are to thank for the 40 hour working week (working weeks upwards of 60 hours was not uncommon before unions fought it) and the 8 hour working day, they're to thank for ending child labour, they're to thank for company-supported health insurance, they're to thank for paid sick leave and vacation days, they're to thank for workplace health and safety regulations that prevent workplace deaths, they're to thank for overtime pay rates. They're to thank for WEEKENDS.
What I find hilarious about people like you is that you speak loudly about how people should have the ability to make decisions for themselves... and then try to remove unions and bemoan the fact that people actually want to work together. Why are you so against people working together to get better conditions for their work? You right-wingers are so in favour of the constitution, right? As I recall, the constitution guarantees freedom of association - so why do right-wingers try so hard to remove workers' rights to associate and to work together?
In fact, why are right-wingers seemingly so against workers, and so in favour of CEOs and other such people? Why should an united corporate structure get to steamroll over its workers, who you don't feel should be allowed to organise? Why do the corporate managers get to organise, but the workers don't?
To be entirely blunt, your attitude makes me sick. It makes me sick from half way across the world - I'm Australian. Your nation is extremely anti-worker already, it's rather regressive in its tax policies and its attitudes towards workers vs "investors", and you've got third-world-level poverty in a supposedly first-world country... and half the country is demanding less money spent on things like education and health, less money spent on everything except military, you're demanding tax cuts for millionaires even as poverty levels rise, and you're trying to eradicate unions during a recession even as CEO payouts are hitting ever greater record highs.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that an economy requires people to have money in order to spend money. Unions fight for better conditions and better pay, which then feeds back into the economy, which boosts company profits. CEOs fight for more money because they want more money - it's not like they're going to spend all of it on food, or things like that. No, the extra money doesn't get "invested", if that's what you think. The money instead gets used to buy influence in order to get even more money.
The rich are getting richer in America at a disproportionately high rate, and your problem with this is that unions still exist?
Here's a statistic to think about.
The top 1% in Australia earns less than 10% of the income. In America, it's over 17%. In Australia, trade union membership increased between 2008 to 2009 from 19% to 20%. In America (as per that graph), the rate is down around 12-13%, and is currently declining. In America, the tax rates start at 10% and go up to 35%. In Australia, it starts at 0%, and then makes its way up to 45% (which kicks in at $180,000 a year).
In Australia, the national debt is 28.8% of GDP (as of 2010). In the US, it's 62.9% of GDP (again, as of 2010). Meanwhile, Australia was the only developed nation to completely avoid going into recession during the Global Financial Crisis. Funny, that. Oh, and the Pièce de résistance? Australia's unemployment rate is just 5.1% (having actually gone *up* recently) vs 8.1% in the US.
So next time, maybe you will try actually looking into the facts rather than spouting nonsense that comes from Fox News?
