Category: Economics

Posted on

Unions Are About Fairness

unionNicholas Kristof recently wrote an editorial, The Cost of a Decline in Unions

On the whole I believe unions to be a necessary component of our capitalistic system. The individual worker has very little power in dealing with large businesses or large government entities. When they do have power it is when there is a tight labor market, but those seldom seem to last very long.

It is always dangerous to generalize from one’s personal experience to make points about larger issues, but here I go. I have seen union membership be required when the union did little for the worker. They were in place, gathered their dues, and that was about it. At the other end I have seen unions so intent on justifying their existence that they frequently went to the extremes. They did not realize that sometimes good is good enough. There is, of course, a MLK holiday. The union for the outfit I worked for in Memphis managed to wrangle another holiday, the day of MLK’s assassination. It always struck me that they filed all too many grievances, and generally tried to maintain an attitude of the union versus management. Frequently what seems to happen with unions in place is an overly structured workplace.   The company and the worker lose some ability to do the work creatively. In the past the union managed to create jobs that were perhaps unnecessary. I had a roommate in Rhode Island who was a union fireman. His workday consisted of going in at 11 p.m., Continue reading “Unions Are About Fairness”

Posted on

ObamaCare for Dummies

This is a very NON-PARTISAN explanation of the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare.  It strikes me that a large number of folks are opposed to ObamaCare and actually have little or no understanding of what it really is.

One issue I hear a lot is that folks are afraid that they will be taxed to subsidize freeloaders.  IMHO this is happening already in two ways.  The first would be excessive corporate profits.  There is a reason insurance executives can be paid those huge salaries and bonuses.  Secondly, when poor folks have no other health care option but to show up at an emergency room we are taxed for by the cost be shifted into other arenas of the hospital and passed on to paying patients.

Health resources are limited which means they need to be triaged.  The question becomes do you want the government triaging your health care or a for profit corporation.  Seniors seem to love the governments Medicare program.  Native Americans seem to find Indian Health Care more than acceptable.  My personal issue with ObamaCare is that is leaves too much in the private sector, but I realize it was probably the best that could be done at the time.

At least invest the 15 minutes or so in a very well done video before you absolutely decide one way or the other about ObamaCare.  Far too many of us many political decisions along partisan lines without all the information.  Far too many of our politicians do not speak to the issue, but work on our fears.  Educating yourself is at least a start in the right direction.

Posted on

Lawsuit Claims Obama Discriminated Against American Workers.

The CF continues.  Apparently the Obama administration is in bed with InfoSys.  To quote from the article from Computerworld in this link Court case offers a peek at how H-1B-fueled discrimination works :37.1784

“The passage of the Affordable Care Act brought with it a burst of IT spending and hiring. The District of Columbia, for instance, hired offshore outsourcing firm Infosys for $49.5 million to build its Healthcare Exchange.

The India-based Infosys brought in H-1B visa holders to work on the government project. And of the approximately 100 Infosys employees working on the healthcare project, only three were American, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court.”

Just to be clear the discrimination they are referring is against citizens of the United States in the IT field.

To quote from another article Lawsuit: Tech Company Hired to Build D.C. Obamacare Website Discriminated Against Americans Continue reading “Lawsuit Claims Obama Discriminated Against American Workers.”

Posted on

This IT worker had to train an H-1B replacement

The H1-B program is such a cluster fuck visited on the American worker that cluster fuck is not a strong enough term.  I’m in IT and I have been watching this disaster for years.

I was contracting at large financial firm.  I begin noticing a large number of young Indians coming in as contract workers.  Contracting is a very common method in IT.  Companies like because they can staff up and staff down as needed.  I used to like because the companies generally compensated well for the insecurity of a contracting positions, and I did not mind moving around to different jobs.  To get back to my position at the financial firm.  When I saw all the Indians coming in I knew my days were numbered, and they were.  They found a pretense to terminate my contract nine months early.  It was my second contract at this firm, and they had actually given me more money to come back for a second contract.  Additionally, they had given me an 18 month contract when normal they did not go over a year.  They seemed to like my work. My consulting firm later told me that they were bringing in the Indians at $25/hour  less than I was receiving.  I can promise you I was not getting rich.  This was at a time long past the glory days of contracting.

This particular consulting firm ended up going out of business as they could not compete with the cheap off-shore labor either.  And this was one of the older and bigger consulting companies.  Now days, when a consulting company calls you about a contract if you are talking to an American it is a miracle.  If the consulting company is not Indian it is even more of a miracle.  You have to give the Indians credit.  Many of the Indian companies have used the minority preferences given by our laws to gain an advantage.  Essentially this has allowed Indian firms to corner this market in preference to American firms.

Who do I blame?  I do not blame individual Indians, but I do blame Congress and our President who are in cahoots with our corporations who only care about profit and cheap, cheap labor.   It is something I have ranted about for years.  Congress briefly played lip service to all the complaints, but I do believe the problem is even worse than it was before.

To read about one of these horror stories, go to This IT worker had to train an H-1B replacement at Computerworld.com

 

Just in case you do not know what a H1-B Visa — click the link for the Wikepedia article on same.

Posted on

Another Teddy Roosevelt quote for our times

Teddy-Roosevelt-Rough-Rider“These men demanded for themselves an immunity from governmental control which, if granted, would have been as wicked and as foolish as immunity to the barons of the twelfth century. Many of them were evil men. Many others were just as good men as were some of these same barons; but they were as utterly unable as any medieval castle-owner to understand what the public interest really was. There have been aristocracies which have played a great and beneficent part at stages in the growth of mankind; but we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.“

and bonus one… funny how little progress we have made, or perhaps have reverted back to those times of Robber Barons.

“Men who understand and practice the deep underlying philosophy of the Lincoln school of American political thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and efficient National Government Continue reading “Another Teddy Roosevelt quote for our times”

Posted on

Something everyone should know on Tax Day