What could Trump do to cause his supporters to vote against him?

[velcro]

So basically for a lot of people, it's personal. That's cool. Nothing wrong with having morals and convictions.

In all seriousness, it sounds like morals and convictions are completely optional for you.  Just curious - do you have them?

YMMV, but when a presidential candidate says that they will order American soldiers to commit war crimes, it's not "personal".  Same for lying about significant policy issues and clean campaign issues.  Maybe calling his sexual assault accusers liars is personal, like drug use. But the others are behaviors that damage the country, not just personally irritate me.

One can't help but wonder with Trump's past of supporting Democrats, if he had run on the Democrat ticket and beat Hillary in the primary and was looking to nominate more liberal justices to the Supreme Court if many of the people who would never vote for him as a Republican because of his personal issues would hold their nose and do it anyway if he were a Democrat. I suppose many wouldn't and would give up the Supreme Court because of personally not liking a candidate but that would sure put it all to the test.

If Trump as Democrat went against Kasich, Romney, McCain (without Palin), Bush I, Dole, or Kemp, I would vote for the Republican in a heartbeat. Bush II I would have to think about.  Policies can be reversed easily compared to the damage Trump is doing on many fundamental levels.

[TheDrake]

In all seriousness, it sounds like morals and convictions are completely optional for you.  Just curious - do you have them

I don't get that sense at all. Thou shalt not kill is a moral conviction, but comes with a caveat for most interpreters "unless someone is trying to kill you".

For many, the moral imperative of "must not lose freedom, must stop abortion, etc." overrides any consideration of whether someone is a bald faced liar, a serial groper, or a war crime threatener entirely. Some might draw the line at actually ordering war crimes, but possibly not. However, this is a false dichotomy. You aren't stuck with only one person who can do the good things under that moral framework that don't come with the horrors of Trump. Unless you believe him when he says things like "only I can do this".

[Gaoics79]

Second, yes, it is a hard sell to say that "my side" has not been willing to compromise for the last 50 years (!), since it implies that "your side" would.  This, after John Boehner pledged: "We're going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it [the Obama agenda], stop it, slow it down, whatever we can."  After Mitch McConnell said: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." After the House voted on two immigration bills specifically intended to prevent a bi-partisan bill from being forced to a vote on the floor.  And you see "us" as the ones who are never willing to compromise?

Of course, I'm more generous than you.  I only see Republican obstructionism lasting about 20 years, since late in the Clinton Administration.  What happened 50 years ago where "we" did not compromise with "them?"  Perhaps if you provided a list of these issues where "we" won't compromise, and "our" statements were "we" said we would never compromise (like the ones above), you'd have a better chance of convincing me of the intransigence of "my" side.  Because it seems to me that compromise only truly went out the window when the Haster Rule became entrenched in our government.  And that only became the norm in the late 90's with Newt Gingrich, after making a budget compromise with Clinton--just about the last major piece of legislation where our representatives cooperated across the aisle.

It would make an interesting topic to discuss which "side" is less willing to compromise than the other.  Perhaps you should start a topic on it?

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear in terms of what I was talking about. I wasn't referring to the petty day to day bickering among political parties in Washington over nothing, which is really what you are talking about above. Obama versus Bush versus Clinton - potato potaato. Republicans, Democrats, please - no one could even tell the difference.

I was specifically referring to the social issues that have reshaped society for the past fifty years, somewhat through the vehicle of the courts, but also in society at large - the sexual revolution, unfettered legalized abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, gay marriage, ubiquitous legal pornography, school prayer, affirmative action, the recession of religion in public and private life, the reshaping of the modern university to openly endorse and entrench left wing ideologies, and the filtering of these ideologies into law societies (the bodies that regulate lawyers), schools, governments and quasi governmental associations.

Republicans and other right aligned parties in the west have railed against most of these items for 50 years, used them to rally their bases, raise money. Democrats and left aligned parties have used them as rallying calls to their bases. But in the end, the left won every single battle, completely. The fearsome Christian right in the USA, arguably the spearhead of right / conservative / religious power in the west,  failed at every battle it fought, a spent force impotent to achieve anything. The right in the USA and especially in the rest of the developed world has been a perennial loser for much longer than I have been alive.

It's amazing to talk to people who actually believe that the right and conservative aligned ideologies are so powerful in our societies. It's laughably delusional.

And it's interesting to watch people wail and gnash their teeth at the idea of a Supreme Court that may be starting to lean ever so gently right for the first time in more than a generation. Suddenly judges making law isn't so appealing, is it?

[cherrypoptart]

Found the article. Luckily I had it in my history because wasn't finding it by searching the usual ways.

http://www.businessinsider.com/zero-tolerance-border-crisis-immigration-trump-obama-detention-centers-2018-6

"Immigration lawyer recounts a conversation with Obama about the border crisis that he says 'shook me to my core'
Bryan Logan Jun. 20, 2018, 4:47 AM

    A lawyer who works with immigrant communities in the southern US argued on Monday that the fallout from the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy was an extension of practices implemented by the Obama administration.
    R. Andrew Free recounted on Twitter a 2015 exchange with President Barack Obama, during which Free said he implored Obama to close two detention centers in southern Texas out of concern for the women and children being held there.
    "It's wrong. And it's going to be a stain on your legacy," Free recalled telling Obama.
    The lawyer said Obama's response, as he remembered it, "shook me to my core."

...  In his tweets, Free recalled Obama's response to his suggestion that the detention centers would tarnish the president's legacy.

"I'll tell you what we can't have," Obama said, according to Free. "It's these parents sending their kids here on a dangerous journey and putting their lives at risk."

Free said he interpreted the president's remarks as an argument for treating the migrant holding facilities as a deterrent to illegal immigration."

------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure that specifically addresses separating the families though except perhaps indirectly. Obama seems to be more concerned here about the mothers who separated themselves from their own children and sent them on a long and dangerous journey where they arrived here, if they were lucky, as unaccompanied minors. In those cases it wasn't our government separating mothers and children, but the mothers themselves doing it. So what was Obama's alternative that wouldn't encourage more people to do the same thing?

[Greg Davidson]

cherry,

Your whole point here with this quote depends on you coming up with a very sinister interpretation of a single quote by Obama that has many other interpretations. 

[Greg Davidson]

But in the end, the left won every single battle, completely. The fearsome Christian right in the USA, arguably the spearhead of right / conservative / religious power in the west,  failed at every battle it fought, a spent force impotent to achieve anything.

With respect to social issues, the left has won many battles, but not all - access to abortion has been significantly constrained.

However, with respect to the balance between corporations and employees, the right wing has had 40 years of victories (go back and look at laws in the mid 1970's). In terms of providing greater and greater advantages to the wealthy, the right wing has been largely successful over the past 3 decades.

[Gaoics79]

However, with respect to the balance between corporations and employees, the right wing has had 40 years of victories (go back and look at laws in the mid 1970's). In terms of providing greater and greater advantages to the wealthy, the right wing has been largely successful over the past 3 decades.

I don't disagree with the fact that power has tilted to corporations and the wealthy. However, I'd argue increasing inequality has vastly more to do with mechanization, offshoring and free trade, all practices that are neither right nor left, and have broad bipartisan support among mainstream political factions from all sides of the right/left divide in most of the developed world, including the USA.

[Seriati]

With respect to social issues, the left has won many battles, but not all - access to abortion has been significantly constrained.

Sigh.  Access to abortion, went from illegal in many states to legal in every one.  Meanwhile, approval of abortion has become the majority view of the country, with major support in both political parties.  34% of all Republicans (and 54% of mod/liberal Republicans) think it should be legal in most or all cases (keep in mind 22% of all Democrats think it should be illegal in all cases).  The social war has been won.  It's unlikely the SC will try to unwind it, but even if they do they can't make it illegal anywhere, only push it to the states, and if the states act in such a manner it's almost certain to force a constitutional amendment and/or ensure that 60-70% of the country votes against the party behind it.

However, with respect to the balance between corporations and employees, the right wing has had 40 years of victories (go back and look at laws in the mid 1970's). In terms of providing greater and greater advantages to the wealthy, the right wing has been largely successful over the past 3 decades.

Well, keeping aside the idea that the law shifted too far to labor in the past, which objectively I believe it did.  The biggest "swing" has been NAFTA and free trade initiatives that have put perpetual pressure on the working class (and which you've defended as good things).   The idea that American workers can have $15 minimum wages, pensions and full healthcare when competing with workers making less than a dollar a day and no benefits without any kind of tariffs or other protections was non-sense.  It's literally, a political day dream to claim you want to protect workers by insisting that they have costly benefits that make them uncompetitive.

Labor Unions put themselves out of business in most of the private market.  They lobbied for the laws that protected the workers and got them, after that 90% of what they want makes them less competetive than the companies with which they are competing (and your free trade stance makes it impossible to force their non-US competitors to meet the same standards).

They've always had inherent unfairness built in.  Union shops are unfair.  Seniority based systems that force better newer workers out the door in favor of poorer performers with seniority are unfair (and the trade off that it keeps employers from firing employees with more experience that cost more is largely a solution in search of a problem).  It's a silly system that hard codes years of service without considering if there is a value adjustment.  Preventing bad employees from being fired is bad for morale, quality and expenses.  All that caused bankruptcy after bankruptcy.  Not law changes, plain old expenses.

Public unions should never have been allowed in the first place.  They are corruption inherent.  They persistently get involved in political decisions to put in power and hold sway over the very people that negotiate their contracts on behalf of their employer (the people of the community).  And it shows, public unions have contracts that provide rights that the people in the community in which they live could only dream of.  Rights that have been so expensive and unrealistic as to drive communities into bankruptcy.  Rights that don't change when the market leaves them behind.  Rights that are absolutely not in the interest of the public that retained them and that only corrupt vote buying politicians would have agreed to provide.

I mean honestly, the NLRB has been so anti-business that it's interfered with the ability of companies to build where they want, to hire who they want and even how they conduct business on a day to day basis.  it's devolved from a grand history of actually protecting employees to one of partisan wishlist pursuits.

If you are preaching about the plight of the American worker at the same time you are  decrying Trump on his trade wars you are a literal hypocrite on this topic.

[velcro]

In all seriousness, it sounds like morals and convictions are completely optional for you.  Just curious - do you have them

I don't get that sense at all.

You left out the original quote that I was referring to.

Nothing wrong with having morals and convictions.

Read with its standard interpretation, it means you think something is good, but not essential.  "Nothing wrong with free pizza on Fridays."  But if you think morals and convictions are fundamental to your personal integrity, it is generally not something you would say.  It's subject to interpretation, which is why I asked. 

[Greg Davidson]

I did want to get back to Seriati on unions - I agree that unions sometimes do bad things. Just like the 6 corporations that decided to make giant bets totaling most of the $54 trillion that were the primary root cause of the economic collapse in 2008.

The objective is to have balance so that the interests of both those who earn money because they own stuff and those who work for wages can be represented. Almost no one works 6-7 days a week, because the labor movement had enough power to make changes that we all enjoy to this day.  In recent US history, corporate power has disadvantaged workers both relative to past history (in some ways) as well as relative to their counterparts in developed economies that in the past generation have grown as much as the US or more (with the only caveat that under Obama, the US recovered faster than the rest of the developed world). 

[TheDrake]

Almost no one works 6-7 days a week

Challenge.

[Seriati]

I did want to get back to Seriati on unions - I agree that unions sometimes do bad things. Just like the 6 corporations that decided to make giant bets totaling most of the $54 trillion that were the primary root cause of the economic collapse in 2008.

We already had this debate, and as i recall you didn't comprehend the true causes of the financial collapse.  In any event, it's a complete nonsequitor, that's equalivant to the much ballyhooed whataboutism.

The objective is to have balance so that the interests of both those who earn money because they own stuff and those who work for wages can be represented. Almost no one works 6-7 days a week, because the labor movement had enough power to make changes that we all enjoy to this day.

So ivory tower.  I work on average 6 days a week and I know many people that work all 7 routinely.

In recent US history, corporate power has disadvantaged workers both relative to past history (in some ways) as well as relative to their counterparts in developed economies that in the past generation have grown as much as the US or more (with the only caveat that under Obama, the US recovered faster than the rest of the developed world).

So your claim is that US workers are worse off than other workers in the world?  That's how we got the reputation of being the greatest consumer economy on the planet?  The lack of power of our workers?

Obama was a disaster economically.  ignoring the economic drag his policies created is your biggest failing, and really only possible because N=1 and we can not directly compare the much better results different policies would have generated over the same time period.

I've pointed out to you dozens of times, that the Fed Funds rate was set effectively at zero for his entire Presidency.  It's never been that low for any other President, and never that consisentently held low for any administration.  That's a direct measure of how desparate the government was to try and force any improvements under Obama back maximizing stimulus and it still didn't work.  Checked the rate out under Trump?  Constant raises to try and slow economic growth. 

Why do you hate the poor and the middle class so much that you'd rather endorse terrible economic policies than admit they were failures?

[Greg Davidson]

We already had this debate, and as i recall you didn't comprehend the true causes of the financial collapse

As I recall, Alan Greenspan and the entirety of free market economic theorists cannot explain the actual events of the economic collapse of 2008 into their models, as he confessed in Congressional testimony 10/23/2008 ("I have found a flaw [referring to his economic philosophy]... I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact... I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms" https://www.c-span.org/video/?c3342718/waxman-greenspan-testimony). I missed the part where you came up with a alternative economic model that addressed Greenspan's error (and I missed your subsequent Nobel Prize as well).


As for the macho American thing bragging about how many hours you work, I can go toe-to-toe before addressing this issue - I have done 80-hour work-weeks, and I lead a group that often has some people working that long and hard (they get extra compensation for large numbers of extra hours, but I don't at my level).  So I also work 6 days a week often, but I also am a highly-compensated employee with kids out of the house and a wife who works long hours at her nonprofit religious institution.  That being said, TheDrake is right, there has been considerable backsliding in the US in the last few decades due to the precise dominance of corporate interests over unions that led to the 5-day work week as a standard. But that reinforces the point that when union power was more of a counter-point to corporate power, that drove the vast majority of American workers to a 5-day schedule. 

Your assertion that "Obama was a disaster economically" is blaming him for the economic collapse. Republicans get this amnesia about what it was like when the economy was losing 25,000 private sector jobs every day until Obama came into office. Your assertion is completely inconsistent with the facts that the US economy (with Obama's stimulus) grew faster than every other developed economy in the world. Sure, Fed policy helped a great deal, but at that point the financial system and the automotive industry were falling over a cliff. Your retelling of history is convenient, but not accurate.

 

[Fenring]

To be fair, Greg, Greenspan and others like him frequently exhibit what I would call a contempt of the Congress. This can manifest in various ways, which include either refusing to answer questions, answering dishonestly knowing that the reverse cannot be proved, or making statements that have the air of cooperation but which essentially either kick the can or dodge. In the case of this particular testimony I'm not sure what his intention was, but if Greenspan says he made a mistake it could just as soon be the case that he knew exactly what the risks were and won't accept any responsibility. The conditions that eventually led to the collapse happened on his watch, after all, so he's not exactly going to say that it was foreseeable and he was incompetent - or worse. It seems only natural that he'll attribute the collapse to misjudgment about the competence of banks to protect themselves rather than to himself (at least in part). And this is especially noteworthy because he headed the exact institution that would allow for companies to behave irresponsibly on purpose and get away with it without folding.

I say this not to torpedo your point, which I actually agree with, which is that these matters aren't so trivial that a simple theory can just explain it all. However on the other hand I'm not entirely willing to believe that Greenspan and certain others were simply blindsighted by all this. Low level traders - absolutely; but him? My point is that when measuring who's 'won' or 'lost' in terms of right vs left, I don't know that monetary policy is a fair area in which to weigh things because I think that sphere largely exists above and outside of partisan politics. Unions may be weaker than they used to be, but as jasonr pointed out I think much of the shifting has been technological and diplomatic in cause and not to do with either side defeating the other. Fiscal policy might be a better area in which to weigh wins and losses between the sides, but even then I think shifting can be accounted for in various ways other than this. The social issues seem to be the easiest to clearly attribute to local American change, and so it would seem based on this at any rate that the left has been destroying the right almost across the board for some time. This alone makes it harder for people supporting Trump (or any Republican) to readily switch sides to vote Democrat on principle, as there are real social losses being incurred on a regular basis. That said I just learned recently that a couple of right-wing friends actually did vote for Hillary over Trump on principle, but I suspect this isn't that common an occurrence, especially for single-issue voters.

[TheDrake]

Union rules, and the laws they generated, actually prevent workers from having nice things they want. If I want to work 50 hours (hourly), and I would be perfectly happy with my normal rate, I am prevented from doing that.

Instead, if I want to work 50 hours, I know have to have two different employers and try to juggle schedules between them.

In fact, employers are probably only going to give me 30 hours for a variety of reasons, including overtime rules.

Back when I was in college, this made me a criminal because I participated in a scheme to move hours from one week to the next, and paying people under the table. All to avoid these lovely rules that I owe some kind of debt to unions for creating?

I'll take corporate and self interest every day over some group of people elected by 51% of my co-workers.

And that's ignoring the violent action taken toward people who just wanted to work and feed their family and not be in the union.

[velcro]

As Greg said, unions, like corporations and any other organization, do good things and bad things. There are some unions with stupid rules.  There are some corporations with stupid policies.  There are some unions and corporations with good policies.  Anyone who denies this is an idealogue.

We should not demonize all unions, or all corporations.  However, just as we all agree that monopolies are bad, the same reasons apply to having a balance between labor and capital, i.e. between unions and corporations.  Too much power on one side causes problems.

On another topic:

Why do you hate the poor and the middle class so much that you'd rather endorse terrible economic policies than admit they were failures?

Proverbs 26:4

[TheDrake]

There's nothing a Union can accomplish that enlightened self interest cannot. Does everybody need to go on strike for it to be effective? Do you have to hurl obscenities at people who decide that they don't think the company is so bad? Unions use force. They compel. Companies do not. If a business hires non-union, unions threaten them. It's extortion. I don't know of exceptions to that rule. Is there a union out there that doesn't use labor laws to force all workers to join up after a vote? Is there one that doesn't get agitated if a non-union person is ever hired and threaten never to work with them again? It seems to apply to as varied sources as AFL-CIO, IWW, SAG, AFT, AFSCME.

#righttowork

[Fenring]

Unions use force. They compel. Companies do not.

Oh, I don't know about that. Individually, if you inspect a company out of context, it may appear that their policies and terms are all voluntary. When looking at the larger picture it can become clear that a literal or a de facto cartel has emerged where similar terms are offered across the field and there is no meaningful choice for workers beyond 'work or die'. And even that implies that the work can be obtained in the first place. Cartel-like behavior is one of the most significant reasons IMO that a free market devoid of strict regulation can ever function properly. Random workers cannot self-organize like an industry can, and this imbalance needs to be corrected one way or another. Also noteworthy is that the use of soft or hard force has different connotations depending on who's wielding it. If a group of corporate interests dictates terms to potential workers the result of them effectively refusing those terms is they become homeless or perish. Conversely, when workers leverage terms with companies the result will be far less dire to management should they refuse such terms; their lives are literally not on the line, at least in the short term. This imbalance of negotiating power can be seen even more acutely in the realm of medical care costs, where being "free" to refuse terms offered is a non-starter in many cases.

[TheDrake]

I'm fine with breaking down companies with clauses or contracts that restrict the mobility of workers.

And I'm also fine with large numbers of employees freely deciding to bargain collectively at a company or across an industry to improve their bargaining power. If its such a good deal, there shouldn't be any problem getting people to voluntarily sign up and pay dues.

If somebody doesn't sign up, then management should be free to pay them less, give them fewer benefits, etc.

[Fenring]

If somebody doesn't sign up, then management should be free to pay them less, give them fewer benefits, etc.

What you're talking about isn't brand new, it's called scab labor. There can be varying reasons to strike-break: either you need the money so desperately you can't afford to strike; or maybe you're content to work for worse terms than the next guy. The issue in a market where the workers are deprived of negotiating power is that you'll much more readily find people willing to undercut the other workers, thereby driving down the price of labor to a point where potentially no one can really afford it but they'll take it anyhow. It's entirely reasonable to suppose that workers will accept unreasonable contracts and - to use a liberal term - vote against their own interests with their choice of employment. One can see the same thing in contract bidding where an open bidding system is used, and the result is that companies will offer bids they can't actually afford to follow-through on because they want to undercut the competition. The result is misery for all, where they either cannot fulfill the contract or else jack up the costs later on and the company that hired them faces the sunk cost problem; or sometimes they just go out of business because they can't afford to work for that little. But invariably many will offer to do it anyhow just to get the contract. That's why open bidding is often eshewed in favor of a blind bid system - to make sure that the terms are actually operable by both sides. In the case of 'bidding' for jobs the workers haven't got the luxury of 'making sure' they accept fair terms as they cannot afford to not accept some sort of contract. If all contracts offer miserable terms they will still take it, and in the case of strike-breaking all you would find is that the more people who did as you suggest the weaker the union would be, and eventually the unions would fold and cease to exist. It's not very useful to be in a union with no teeth and where just as many workers if not more offer the same services sans union for cheaper and no benefits. What companies in the short-term do not see - and are not even designed to care about - is what the aggregate effect is of getting one over on the workers. It seems like the 'free market' solution to you, but it actually harms the companies too in the long run. And no, self-interest will not correct for this; more likely the group myopia will drive things into the ground if not reversed artificially. See the 2008 crash for details.

I don't disagree with the notion, by the way, that union terms can price themselves out of the market and ruin industries. I'm not entirely convinced that a union is the correct way to re-balance negotiating power with businesses. However I do recognize that some sort of universal balancing needs to take place to prevent workers from being bullied. Noteworthy also is that we can see the mirror image of this in sectors where highly-skilled workers are hard to find, in which case they hold the negotiating power over the businesses. This can often be seen now in tech, for instance, where companies like Google snatch up skilled labor and costs are basically driven up for anyone looking for good coders or engineers. So properly I should say that the negotiating imbalance right now seems to center around the workers least able to stand being out of work for even a short time due to lack of savings and alternative solutions - which is a huge proportion of the American workforce.

[NobleHunter]

Unions use force. They compel. Companies do not.

I suggest you double check the history of the labor movement.

[TheDrake]

Obviously I mean contemporary companies in the western world. And limited to employee relations, primarily.

[Greg Davidson]

Unions use force. They compel. Companies do not.

Force by workers and companies are both intrinsic to human behavior, wherever there is a conflict over interests. And companies generally have more power, including the power to create the impression that they are innocent and it is only those greedy workers who are engaged in struggles over income.  Read these words by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations from 1776 and tell me if you don't feel that they are just as true today:

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether their combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard of.

One of the remarkable accomplishments of American civilization is that we recognized this conflict and put legislation in place that eliminated much of the abuses of corporate power. It is the policy of the Republican Party to gut as much of that legislation as they can, and let corporate power rule.

There are different tools in the modern arsenal than in Adam Smith's time, but the same basic conflict occurs, and right now through the power and sophistication of money to influence media, the balance tilts far too much towards corporate power

[velcro]

If somebody doesn't sign up, then management should be free to pay them less, give them fewer benefits, etc.

First of all, with public sector unions, it is against the law to do that.  If a union negotiates a better salary, the non-union workers must get the same salary.  Which makes the recent Supreme Court ruling that prevents unions from charging non-members anything for that benefit even more ridiculous.

This may have been mentioned already, but management has an incentive to pay all workers the same anyway.  It weakens the incentive for workers to be in the union.  Why pay for something you could get for free?

Your suggestion of workers banding together informally for negotiation is sort of a multi-dimensional prisoners dilemma.  A union like that is very unstable.

Some unions use force.  Some hurl obscenities.  Some do not.
Some companies use force.  Some hurl obscenities.  Some do not.
Actually, it is individuals using force and hurling epithets.  Companies and unions have no arms or vocal cords.

There's nothing a Union can accomplish that enlightened self interest cannot.

That's true of companies too.  Or government.  Or religions.  Or any organization.
The question is how likely is it to happen.  Pure enlightened self-interest is somewhat unicornish.  Add just a pinch of human nature, e.g. one of the seven deadly sins, and that goes out the window.  Reality requires rules and compulsion to some extent.  Not neccessary in an ideal world, but necessary in this one.  The key it to minimize it and make it equal.

[TheDrake]

Costco and Walmart are great foils in this space. Both companies have jobs with minimal training. Walmart regularly faces unionization threats because they treat their employees, customers, and suppliers like garbage. The Costco workers would not be better off if a grocery union pops up.

[velcro]

Almost no one works 6-7 days a week

Challenge.

Not to speak for Greg, but here goes:

The original statement was:

Almost no one works 6-7 days a week, because the labor movement had enough power to make changes that we all enjoy to this day.

Replace that with "the hours worked per week dropped from 60 to 40 because the labor movement had enough power to make changes that we all enjoy to this day"

Does anyone deny that? If so, read the link.

[D.W.]

Almost no one

This is the part in question.  While I almost always work 40, I know several people who work more. 

I don't think many would argue that the labor movement didn't improve things, but a lot of people must work more than that still.

[Fenring]

Almost no one

This is the part in question.  While I almost always work 40, I know several people who work more. 

I don't think many would argue that the labor movement didn't improve things, but a lot of people must work more than that still.

Working more than 40 hours is a direct result of a weakness in bargaining power by workers. Drake's challenge is actually direct evidence that the market will not correct itself to everyone's satisfaction except under ideal circumstances. When business is hurting and people are starving for good jobs they will accept poor terms because they know they can't get better elsewhere. Although in our current situation this seems to have been caused by a combination of the 2008 crash and the outsourcing of the middle class, the result verges closely to what we would see in a quasi-cartel situation. In either case the situation is one where a lack of better options means you have to accept what they offer you, which includes working nights and weekends for jobs that have no business demanding that. The lack of plentiful salary positions especially means that salary workers are taken advantage of in this way, which is probably borderline illegal but also unenforceable.

I think the bragging we see in Americans who work so hard (Europeans seem to have difficulty understanding what's to be proud of in having a brutal work/life balance) can be largely attributed to cognitive dissonance and a refusal to see what's happening as abusive. No one wants to think that they're being abused and can do nothing about it.

[TheDrake]

Almost no one works 6-7 days a week, because the labor movement had enough power to make changes that we all enjoy to this day.

Replace that with "the hours worked per week dropped from 60 to 40 because the labor movement had enough power to make changes that we all enjoy to this day"

Those are drastically different statements.

But either category fails on salaried employees, people who own their own business, who don't fit cleanly into "almost no one". One can say "a significant number of workers saw their hours decline at one time, which can be attributed to a labor movement fueled by unions". And today a large number of people get to enjoy underemployment as they get scheduled for 30 hours a week because of the delightful contribution of unions that penalize employers who give employees more than 40 hours of work.

[TheDrake]

The eight-hour push of 1886 was, in Norman Ware’s words, “a flop” (Ware, 1929). Lack of will and organization among workers was undoubtedly important, but its collapse was aided by violence that marred strikes and political rallies in Chicago and Milwaukee. The 1886 drive for eight-hours literally blew up in organized labor’s face. At Haymarket Square in Chicago an anarchist bomb killed fifteen policemen during an eight-hour rally, and in Milwaukee’s Bay View suburb nine strikers were killed as police tried to disperse roving pickets. The public backlash and fear of revolution damned the eight-hour organizers along with the radicals and dampened the drive toward eight hours — although it is estimated that the strikes of May 1886 shortened the workweek for about 200,000 industrial workers, especially in New York City and Cincinnati.

Go team violence!

What do we want? Lots of time to hang around and do nothing productive!
When do we want it? Two out of every seven days!

[Fenring]

And today a large number of people get to enjoy underemployment as they get scheduled for 30 hours a week because of the delightful contribution of unions that penalize employers who give employees more than 40 hours of work.

This doesn't seem entirely relevant, since the 40 hour workers wouldn't have gotten the benefits either without the unions. As to underemployment, that is in part a result of refusing to make someone "full time" but also a result of making sure that your workforce is adequately fluid in the revolving door that is known as your staff. If people are employed full time and one leaves it gives them bargaining power, so having more workers on fewer hours allows for more flexibility in scheduling as well as a less rigid roster where people can be replaced more easily. It's yet another symptom of the weakness of worker power.

In saying this I won't even go deeply into the worst part of underemployment, which is the worthless university degrees people were told they had to get. Making a lousy wage wouldn't even be as bad as it is if people didn't have student debt to contend with. When a business requires (officially or not) a university degree for a crappy job that's practically an advertisement for wage slavery, where the pitch is "hey come work here so that you won't make enough to pay for the degree we're requiring you to have gotten to work here." Nice deal all around, since it means the worker bargaining power is around zero. Or maybe there's a such thing as negative bargaining power - "please give me this bad job! I'll thank you for it!"

[TheDrake]

Not bad, Fenring. I'll take wage slavery all day over wage extortion.

"I have no skills or experience to differentiate me from the other 200 people in your lobby. You will sell the same amount of product whether I work here or not, at the same margin. Let's negotiate, I'm looking forward to folding boxes for ACME!

What's that, low wage? Let me discuss with the other 200 people and we'll decide what we want. If you bring in anyone else who doesn't want to be part of our labor cabal, we'll slash the scab's tires!"

[Fenring]

Not bad, Fenring. I'll take wage slavery all day over wage extortion.

We could talk philosophy about the intersection between moral ethics and economic sense. But on a more pragmatic level, there's one thing you're not taking into account, which is morale. If the morale of management is low the result is they take a fancy vacation. If the morale of workers is low then you can have serious problems that may explode. You can joke a little about wage slavery, but if people who believe they are entitled to something (rightly or wrongly) feel they are being taken advantage of this is a one-way ticket to bad news bears. If violence if what you're worried about then appeasing the people may be the best economic option. Don't forget that economics is the study of what people want, and is sometimes wrongly though of as the study of how to number crunch currency flow. The threat of violence isn't some aberrant un-economic activity, but is rather a very natural economic behavior to upset an unacceptable situation. Avoiding violence isn't only the duty of each person but also the duty of the system itself. If a 'good' economic system makes people violently angry then it isn't actually good. And lest it seem that I'm talking about barbaric heathens who won't live in a civilized manner, what I actually mean to point at is that if people see their situation as akin to actual slavery they will feel not only entitled to be upset but also entitled to feel righteous about it. And this isn't a trivial matter to brush away, especially when it comes to Americans.

[TheDrake]

There are a lot of good reasons to pay people to keep them happy, and not only because they will otherwise be more likely to rob or murder you. Analysts and investors routinely fixate on labor cost, without measuring productivity, customer service, training costs, recruiting costs, etc. That's why I'll never shop in a Walmart - not because I judge them for not being a benevolent employer, but because I don't want to interact with the mouth breathing idiots who are the only people who are hard up enough to work for them.

Luckily all this will disappear as a conversation for the most part when unskilled labor transfers to AI and robots. Unless the robots become self aware, unionize, and demand to be turned off for 2/3 of every day.

Paying off the guys who threaten to break your windows can also be the best economic option, it doesn't mean that this is a good thing, and laws can and do exist to prevent it.

My ire isn't as much on behalf of the company though, it is as a worker. I've heard talk of engineers wanting to form a union. Invariably, these are the least skilled, least motivated, and most bitter members of our profession. Why wouldn't they want to take my salary and average it with theirs, they'd get to move up! Meanwhile, I love doing my job and I'm happy to work 12 hour days. They heart work-life balance and can't wait for the minute hand to hit twelve. Why wouldn't they want us all to be on a contract that forces the company to send us home after eight hours? In other words, why wouldn't they want to limit my potential so they can be better off? All without giving me any say in the matter.

[TheDeamon]

I'm not sure that specifically addresses separating the families though except perhaps indirectly. Obama seems to be more concerned here about the mothers who separated themselves from their own children and sent them on a long and dangerous journey where they arrived here, if they were lucky, as unaccompanied minors. In those cases it wasn't our government separating mothers and children, but the mothers themselves doing it. So what was Obama's alternative that wouldn't encourage more people to do the same thing?

As I recall, that time frame was rife with "unaccompanied minor" crossings into the United States sans parents obviously.

So in that respect, you also need to reframe some of rhetoric about imagery of children being held in detention centers without parents during the Obama Admin. Those children were without their parents due to factors outside the control of ICE--In that there were no parents around to keep with the children.

[TheDeamon]

With respect to social issues, the left has won many battles, but not all - access to abortion has been significantly constrained.

The type of constraint in many cases is very different.

Inability to obtain an abortion because a care provider refuses to provide the service is a very different scenario from being unable to obtain a safe abortion because it was illegal to obtain one.

Giving a doctor(or their employer) a legal right to refuse to provide certain types of care based on religious/moral grounds is very different from telling the doctor their personal views don't matter, and abortion is not an option legally available for consideration, period.

I oppose making most forms of abortion illegal. I support the right of doctors, and the organization they operate under, to decline to render said services.

I know this is placing a lot of women in the unenviable situation of having an unwanted pregnancy in an area where the closest care provider who is willing to provide said services is for all intents, inaccessible. It is an sub-optimal situation, and there no easy way to reconcile the two sides. However, it is highly annoying to see people conflate one thing with another. Lack of access is not the same thing, even if it may feel that way at times.

[Greg Davidson]

Lack of access is not the same as prohibition, I agree. But you create a false dichotomy by defining the choice as either making abortion illegal or supporting "the right of doctors, and the organization they operate under, to decline to render said services".  American conservatives have fought against abortion by a barrage of moves that have ranged from

• legal harassment (coming up with zoning regulations under the guise of women's safety that have nothing to do with safety)
• forbidding government funding to be spent on abortions via the Hyde Amendment (even though the majority of the population are pro-choice)
• attacking private organizations in public legislation (Planned Parenthood), including trying to preclude them from receiving government funding for non-abortion services that similar organizations receive simply because they also provider abortion services
• forbidding doctors to mention abortion
• mandating disturbing and humiliating procedures that are not medically necessary to dissuade or make it more difficult for women to get an abortion
• harassing women entering medical facilities that provide abortion services and in some instances targeted assassination of abortion providers

These are some of the most significant ways that conservatives have fought against the pro-choice position - do you think that your point about forcing doctors to perform abortions is anywhere close to any of these other items in terms of impact?

[rightleft22]

I have family members authentically trying to live their Christians values who politically primary care about one issue. Abortion… They also fear homosexuality and immigration and the impact those issues have with regards to Christian influence (control), but its Abortion the will die for.
 
They want Government out of there pockets while enforcing their values, so they will stand by Trump regardless of anything else he does. Trump could literally walk up to someone on the street and shoot them in the head in front of cameras and they would find a way to look past it… Unless it was a direct tribe member, even then I’m not sure. And that is how movements such as Trumpism tend to go off the rails, men like Trump don't get held accountable.

Before 2016 they would never have excused let alone defend and support a man with similar character traits. 

[Crunch]

I have friends and family who care about abortion a great deal. They also fear AGW and and oil use and it's theoretical impact on the planet.

Before 1992, they would never have excused let alone defend a serial rapist and the wife that supported it by personally destroying his victims. Bill Clinton was never held accountable.

The left made these rules, now we're all gonna play by them.

[LetterRip]

I have friends and family who care about abortion a great deal. They also fear AGW and and oil use and it's theoretical impact on the planet.

Before 1992, they would never have excused let alone defend a serial rapist and the wife that supported it by personally destroying his victims. Bill Clinton was never held accountable.

There was no evidence at all that Clinton was a rapist, let alone a serial rapist back in 1992 - the one person who it was claimed to publicly denied it and denied it in court depositions under penalty of perjury, and the only person claiming it was a political operative.  The only evidence we had in 1992 was that he was a serial philanderer.

The left made these rules, now we're all gonna play by them.

Complete and utter BS.

[DonaldD]

It's the latest and most popular debate method oozing down from Trump, LR - the tried and true "I know you are, but what am I" pre-school of argumentation.

For other examples, see "there is no collusion - the Dems colluded!"

[Wayward Son]

I have friends and family who care about abortion a great deal. They also fear AGW and and oil use and it's theoretical impact on the planet.

Before 1992, they would never have excused let alone defend a serial rapist and the wife that supported it by personally destroying his victims. Bill Clinton was never held accountable.

The left made these rules, now we're all gonna play by them.

As I've said before, this demonstrates that the Right has no morals.  They look to the Left to define them for them.

Before the Right believes something, they first need a Democrat to show them the way.  They wait for a Democrat to do something, then wholeheartedly embrace it, make it their own, and expand it, doing it 100x as much.  And if asked to justify their behavior, they point to the Democrat.

You know something, Crunch?  Just because someone else does something wrong doesn't mean it's now right. 

But that's what the Right believes.  Bill Clinton was a horn-dog.  That means the Right can elect a President who is a p**sy-grabber, serial-adulterer, serial-husband who believes the vows of marriage are for idiots.  After all, even if he is worse than Bill Clinton, he's still our man.

I would suggest any person with any morals to denounce the Republican party ASAP.  Because the next time any Republican talks about being the party of morality and intelligence, I will point to the 2016 election and ask, "If you truly believe that, when why did you elect a man who routinely sh*ts on everything you hold dear?"

Congratulations.  I guess you guys never really were against adultery and such.  You were just jealous that it wasn't your guy doing it.  And now you've gotten your wish. 

[TheDeamon]

I have friends and family who care about abortion a great deal. They also fear AGW and and oil use and it's theoretical impact on the planet.

Before 1992, they would never have excused let alone defend a serial rapist and the wife that supported it by personally destroying his victims. Bill Clinton was never held accountable.

The left made these rules, now we're all gonna play by them.

As I've said before, this demonstrates that the Right has no morals.  They look to the Left to define them for them.

No, in this case I am pretty sure this is an example of "To the victor go the spoils of war" and the Democrats have been winning, for decades. When people are losing, realize they've lost, but aren't ready to give up, they tend to get desperate and will grasp at just about anything which might "save them" from whatever they think their proverbial demise is.

It is a large part of why it was strongly encouraged that victors in competitions treat the defeated well(in the eyes of the defeated) as it makes it less likely that more extreme stress responses will be demonstrated.

Ie the guy who needs only fear a handshake is going to be less desperate than the guy who thinks he is going to be to the Lions otherwise.

"The Left" has played a very major role in setting the tone re: "take no prisoners" for years, and Conservatives left it alone because they were a "clear majority" and not too concerned about it. Well, that "clear majority" is gone, AntiFa and its ilk are in their face, and the stress response has started to show.

But this also cycles back to an earlier refrain: The Democrats have "already won the culture war" they just realize it,  which is a large part of what makes their response to Trump so problematic. They're increasing the stress response rather than letting it play itself out.

[Wayward Son]

You forget what the other typical response of a majority discovering it is/has become the minority: take over and repress the majority.

We've seen it played out in Syria, South Africa and so many other countries.  We're seeing it starting to play out in Israel.  The typical response is to disenfranchise the majority, take away their rights, their vote, and create a second-class of citizens, just to make sure the minority stays in power.  And they defend it with everything they have, mainly because they fear that, if they become the minority, they will become the second-class citizens.

This may not "play itself out."  It may escalate instead.  That's what we're worried about.

[Fenring]

You forget what the other typical response of a majority discovering it is/has become the minority: take over and repress the majority.

We've seen it played out in Syria, South Africa and so many other countries.  We're seeing it starting to play out in Israel.  The typical response is to disenfranchise the majority, take away their rights, their vote, and create a second-class of citizens, just to make sure the minority stays in power.  And they defend it with everything they have, mainly because they fear that, if they become the minority, they will become the second-class citizens.

This may not "play itself out."  It may escalate instead.  That's what we're worried about.

You've got to be kidding me. Trump won an election, not a national movement. And he won because the DNC blew it and for little other reason. You can call dictatorship all you like, but the current Presidency has little to do with the minority suing for fascism (do you really believe that? wtf...) and everything to do with how inept and corrupt the two parties have become. This is Alex Jones level of fearmongering.

[TheDeamon]

You forget what the other typical response of a majority discovering it is/has become the minority: take over and repress the majority.

It isn't a minority, not in reality. It isn't a majority either anymore, and that is a change. It still remains a plurality(The largest "single basket" of minorities), it can still result in the plurality lording of the other minority groups however, but the risk factors with regards to the United States becoming that way, in particular by any group claiming to be "conservative" in nature are in the very low probability range. Considering that voting block is big into "the right to be left alone" by the government, the last thing most of the members of that block will support is a government that fails at leaving people alone without respect to what tag may be attached to a persons name.

We've seen it played out in Syria, South Africa and so many other countries.  We're seeing it starting to play out in Israel.  The typical response is to disenfranchise the majority, take away their rights, their vote, and create a second-class of citizens, just to make sure the minority stays in power.  And they defend it with everything they have, mainly because they fear that, if they become the minority, they will become the second-class citizens.

This may not "play itself out."  It may escalate instead.  That's what we're worried about.

Self-fulfilling nightmare scenario at this point. But only because they keep refusing to back off and let things cool down(or for the current clown in office to discredit himself, he doesn't need the "help," just let him do it on his own. All that is being achieved by "fighting him" is giving him excuses to hide his own folly behind).

Or to work more on the prior metaphor of the desperate man and/or cornered animal comparison is that:
1) "The Left" won the culture war, even if current evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
2) "The Left" is continuing to sling stones and otherwise hurl insults at said desperate man/cornered animal.

....which isn't helping de-escalate things, it is only going to make things worse.

But part of that is because "the Left" has likewise deluded itself into the view that in fact, it is they who are the cornered animal/"desperate man" in this scenario, not those they are railing against.

And you might have noticed I introduced "cornered animal" into this now rather mixed metaphor at this point. Which it to take it to the undesirable conclusion:

What happens when you lock a desperate, nearly feral animal, in a small room with yet another desperate, nearly feral animal?

The rhetoric is out of hand, and while it would be nice if "the conservatives" had an option on the plate at present which allowed them to be the one to turn down the heat on this one, but they're not truly the ones at the controls on this one. Besides which, such acts are usually best performed by the side which is ascendant at the time, which isn't them.

[D.W.]

AntiFa and its ilk are in their face

I gotta ask, where do you guys see this AntiFa surge/prominence?
I swear 75% of my AntiFa exposure is what people here say.  The other 25% is in the news when they are at a white supremacist rally.  If the left is prone to making a much bigger deal out of KKK or Nazi prominence than is deserved given their numbers, then the obsession over AntiFa has got to be exponentially more irrational. 

In what part of the country are these people even worth talking about?  Are they active anywhere accept as a brand name / label to counter protest under?

[Greg Davidson]

I sense from the conservative side a lot of fear and victim-hood - they believe that the Left has done bad things to them, and so all of their bad actions are merely justified retaliations.

So let me rephrase my initial question. Could we devise any test of your basic premise that could theoretically cause you to change your views if the answers came out differently than your expectations?  If we looked in the last 40 years at the 3 most aggressive actions that Democrats took against Republican power and that Republicans took against Democrat power, would you expect that the actions matched in severity and the Democrats took their extreme actions first?

[TheDeamon]

I sense from the conservative side a lot of fear and victim-hood - they believe that the Left has done bad things to them, and so all of their bad actions are merely justified retaliations.

The same could be said about "the other side" as well. Frankly, both sides could benefit greatly from "a chill pill" and quality time in time out. But it isn't going to happen.

So let me rephrase my initial question. Could we devise any test of your basic premise that could theoretically cause you to change your views if the answers came out differently than your expectations?  If we looked in the last 40 years at the 3 most aggressive actions that Democrats took against Republican power and that Republicans took against Democrat power, would you expect that the actions matched in severity and the Democrats took their extreme actions first?

Honestly, I think we stepped "through the looking glass" a long time ago, 2016 at the latest. It has long been "a conservative lament" that for liberals logic and facts don't matter, how they feel about an issue takes precedence over everything else. Well, for a substantial portion of "the political right" logic and facts no longer matter, how they feel about the matter trumps everything else(pun intended).

Reality as it exists in a quantifiable form, assuming you could even get agreement over how to quantify it, has little bearing on things. Perception is now king, for both sides.

The only way you come back from that is one side or the other backs down and gives room and time for the other to cool off. But we're not operating in a paradigm at present where either side is willing to do so.

That and honestly, perceived or actual wrongs from 20 to 40 years ago, while they certainly inform the present, don't have a whole lot of relevance on right now. The perception, and by most measures it is quantifiably correct, is that "the left has won the Culture War" even if they're unwilling to declare victory.

Pursuing their "war" further is something that, IMHO, is something they pursue at their own peril. As they are very much in real danger of spurring their opposition into taking far more desperate and destructive acts than electing Donald Trump as President of the United States. They're cornered, they know they're cornered, they have their heckles up, but they haven't truly lashed out... Yet.

[Greg Davidson]

Alternatively, assertions that both sides are similarly engaging in inappropriate behavior ("Perception is now king, for both sides") might be a false premise asserted by the right because it justifies actions that are otherwise undefendable.

As a group, we don't have concensus regarding the following three hypothesis:

• the left has committed significantly more bad actions
• both sides are the same
• the right has committed significantly more bad actions

I am looking for common ground in the form of tests of logic and fact that we could agree were valid.