Who deserves to get paid for labor?

I am a regular reader of the Soldiers of Solidarity site Future of the Union. It's a rank and file publication that had its genesis out of the Delphi issues a few years ago. They reprint a lot of stories that are of interest if you follow organized labor news as I do.

This popped up there yesterday:

Who owns the jobs? Who created the wealth that American Axle invested around the globe?

The answer to that one is pretty obvious: the customers paid for everything. In American Axle's case, that's the Big Three directly, but ultimately American car buyers who have decided not to pay the bill anymore. Whether you're a CEO or a line worker, if you're busier trying to grab a piece for yourself than satisfy the customer, pretty soon there won't be any pieces to grab.

Just to review

Your wife: OK

Chicks that do it for free: unsavory, but not illegal




Paying $4300: Not cool.

Some inequality numbers to think about

I don't like inequality, I just think the alternatives are worse. I'm not here to defend it but I think the statistics used to justify big government interventions to reduce it are overstated. Apparently, Brad Schiller agrees with me.

From today's WSJ (if you can't read this and are interested in seeing it, email me):

The "typical" household, however, keeps changing. Since 1970 there has been a dramatic rise in divorced, never-married and single-person households. Back in 1970, the married Ozzie and Harriet family was the norm: 71% of all U.S. households were two-parent families. Now the ratio is only 51%. In the process of this social revolution, the average household size has shrunk to 2.57 persons from 3.14 -- a drop of 18%. The meaning? Even a "stagnant" average household income implies a higher standard of living for the average household member.

And from later in the article. . .

The increase in nominal GDP since 2000 amounts to over $4 trillion annually. If you assume that all that money went to the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households, that bonanza would come to a whopping $350,000 per household. Yet according to the Census Bureau, the top 10% of households has an average income of $200,000 or so. The implied bonanza is so absurd that the notion that only the rich have gained from the economic growth can be dismissed out of hand. Clearly, there is a lot of economic advancement across a broad swath of population. Dramatic changes in household composition, household size and immigration tend to obscure this reality.

"They're both not ready. . ."

Of course neither Senator Clinton or Obama is ready to face the challenges of the war on terror and keep our country safe. We knew this.

But, why take it from me when you can listen to Sen. Obama's foreign policy advisor Susan Rice:



If you're serious about defending our country, you have one choice.

For the counterfactual crowd. . .

You might enjoy this from Volokh Conspiracy. It asks for nominations about the long-term effects of Supreme Court cases being differently decided. There's quite the interesting comment thread developing.

Union Math: Where All Children Are Above Average

From the CtW blog:

The study finds that only one in four jobs in America can be described as "good jobs" -- where good jobs is defined as a job that offers health insurance, a retirement plan, and that pays at least an amount in inflation-adjusted dollars equal to the median male worker's wage in 1979 (!). (Nearly a third -- 29% -- of workers surveyed hold jobs that meet none of these three criteria.)

I wonder what the relevant figure was in 1979. I guarantee that it was below half, because _by definition_ half of the male worker's population is below the median,and women's wages are lower than men's.

If you're trying to pull up the percentage of people who are below the median income, you're going to have a tough time with that one.

Ohio and NAFTA

In their Ohio campaigning, the Democratic candidates have decried NAFTA as having cost a whole bunch of Ohio jobs and generally serving only the rich.

Displaying typical Democratic powers of analysis, they have ignored one tiny fact: The unemployment rate in Ohio in December of 1993, the month before NAFTA took effect, was 6.5 percent. Since that month, it has never been that high.

Free trade causes dislocations, there is no question about that. We as a society need to do better at helping people who suffer the downside of free trade obtain new skills in more productive avocations. Having a wealthier society makes that a lot easier. We can only tax what someone makes.