Not Your Grandfather’s Union

This is the last of a series on the latest articles on capitalism…I think. I might have one more.

I started with the history that began with Milton Friedman’s call for profit maximization for shareholders and ending with the fact that shareholders have scoffed up all of the money generated from increased productivity.

Next, I compared two countries with very different from of capitalism: US versus Germany. Germany seems to take care of its workers better and thus are able to retain the workers and offer higher premium goods and services. The grass seems to be greener over there.

Now, we have the college-educated working in positions not typically taken by those with a degree and agitating for formation of unions. (This link might be behind a paywall – the New York Times title is “The Revolt of the College-Educated Workers”, April 28,2022) Companies are in this situation because ever since the Great Recession, they really haven’t provided good paying jobs with growth potentials to those graduating since the Great Recession.

Actually, the lack of good jobs is probably moving towards to where it will be everybody struggling to get a good job.

The emphasis is still on shoveling money to the shareholders when companies should be focusing on providing jobs with good growth potential and good salaries. Right now, they don’t and hence the agitation for unions. Companies have no one to blame but themselves.

I am not sure how this will shake out; we are entering a very perilous period (it actually might have begun back in 2008 but we were not aware of the tremblors) with lots of stressors popping out in the world: current pandemic, American division, the religious right, racial inequity, war in Ukraine, climate change.

There is not much more to say other than things look kind of bleak. The whole “greed is good” era back in the eighties is really coming to the fore.