Tag Archives: political economy

The UAW and Its Volkswagen Union Vote Appeal

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The UAW has, at the last minute, withdrawn its appeal to the NLRB of the vote it lost in Chattanooga concerning its attempt to unionize the Volkswagen plant there.  The UAW lost the vote despite having had the most favorable conditions for their side imaginable, including union representatives proselytizing in the plant during working hours while plant management was not allowed to counter-proselytize.

UAW President Bob King offered this as the rationale for the withdrawal:

The UAW is ready to put February’s tainted election in the rearview mirror and instead focus on advocating for new jobs and economic investment in Chattanooga.

Why does this not feel like an acceptance of reality, but rather that the union has something up its sleeve?  Or is my concern simply borne of the distrust created by the UAW’s routine mendacity in the past, and now my mistrust is misplaced: the union really is interested in cooperation rather than contention as the means of generating jobs?

Gary Casteel, responsible for the UAW’s southern region operations, in fleshing out King’s position,

called on Governor [Bill, R] Haslam to reinstate an offer of $300 million in economic incentives to Volkswagen.  The offer was suspended just before the union vote.

Hmm….

Desperate for Revenue

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All those free perks, ranging from free food in company cafeterias, laundry services, and so on: Uncle Sugar now is looking to tax those things.  They’re in the stage currently of trying to discern who benefits—the company, which gets better productivity, or the employee who gets the goody—so the IRS can levy the tax against the “proper” target.

To what extent is this intended as a perk, a form of compensation, for the benefit of the employee, or to what extent is this just another way the employer gets the employee to work harder and longer and do things for the benefit of the employer? [David Gamage, Assistant Professor of Law at UC, Berkeley] said.

Will they come next after our coffee slush funds, the snack machines provided for free (even if we must pay for the actual snack—and which choices Momma Obama already is trying to regulate), the popcorn machines, the…?

But who benefits isn’t relevant.  The government is scratching for pennies here, and that’s a sign of desperation for money.  If the government is that needy—or even if it isn’t—it must cut spending, so its need for money is lessened.  The Feds have plenty of our money already; it needs no more of it.

Obama’s War

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…on women and on minorities in general continues apace.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would kill off 500,000 jobs…57% of those jobs are held by women.

Women would be disproportionately harmed: those 57% work out to a loss of 285,000 jobs for women.  I suppose, though, that given this administration’s current buzz, President Barack Obama and his coterie view this as a general good.

Obama’s war is just as devastating on other groups of Americans whom his mouth holds in high favor, but his actions plainly disdain.  The Employment Policies Institute has some of the sordid details.

  • For every 10% increase in the minimum wage, teen employment at small businesses is estimated to decrease by 4.6%-9.0%
  • For every 10% increase in the minimum wage, young black and Hispanic teen employment, in particular, looks to fall 4.9%-8.4%

Hmm….

On Denying Market Forces vis-à-vis Supply and Demand

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Here’s an interesting graph from AEIDeas:

What this illustrates is the outcome of the lack of a market for organs to be transplanted, in this graph, specifically kidneys.

As Mark Perry put it in his article [emphasis his],

While the annual number of kidney transplant operations has remained relatively flat since 2005 in a range between about 16,500 and 17,000, the number of registered patients on the waiting list continues to increase.  From about 65,000 registered patients in 2005, the waiting list for a kidney transplant has increased by more than 50% over the last eight years, and by 35,000 patients, to the 100,019 patients who are currently on the kidney waiting list.

And

We know from basic economic principles that congestion, shortages, and surpluses are always caused by a failure to apply market pricing.

Perry’s conclusion should be an obvious one:

The only realistic, long-term and truly compassionate solution to address America’s worsening kidney shortage is to legalize some form of donor compensation.  That would require Congress to amend the outdated National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 so that people who give kidneys could receive a benefit, perhaps a tax credit, tuition voucher, lifetime health coverage, or a contribution to a retirement plan.

Reasonable men can argue about the nature of the price to be offered, but the fact remains that a market is necessary—with a price to be offered for the good desired.  Indeed, with the price needing to vary with fluctuations in demand and supply, a government mandated “benefit” would seem still too suboptimal.  Let the market determine the price, in dollars.

Certainly such a market would be fraught with danger and need careful controls.  But the danger for those patients in the excess represented by the present 6:1 ratio of patients needing a kidney to patients getting a kidney—2013’s 83,000 more Waiting List patients than transplant patients—is greater.  And with an actual market, the risk of unauthorized organ harvesting—in the US, a small problem currently, but not insignificant to the victims—will go down markedly.

And there will be a sharp decrease in the number of excess patients.

Hotel Maryland

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You can check in, but you can’t check out.

Netflix’ show, House of Cards, is about cut-throat politics at its worst, it’s hugely successful, and it’s filmed in Maryland.  And therein lies the rub.

The show’s producers, Media Rights Capital, now want a larger set of tax credits, given that success.  If they can’t get an increase, MRC says it’ll move its filming location to another state where it can get a better deal for its proven product.  Fair enough.  The filming produces income for the state’s economy and for the state, even with the current credit structure, and that success is expected to continue.

The state demurs.  That government wants to keep the credit levels where they are.  Also fair enough.  Those credits are their cost (regardless of what we might think about whose money those credits really is), and the state would like to minimize the cost of its own business-doing.

Such matters should be the stuff of negotiation between the two parties, and if they can’t agree on terms, the two parties should be able simple to part ways.

But the State of Maryland now has gone off the rails.

The House of Delegates now is threatening to seize MRC’s production studios under government’s eminent domain powers if they attempt to go somewhere else.  Never mind that there’s no public use—or even public purpose—to such a seizure; the taking would be nothing more than government-sanctioned theft of private property.

Folks might want to think twice about moving a business to Maryland, or keeping one there.  It’s a short step to a neighboring state, none of which seems inclined to keep businesses prisoner.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door.
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before.
“Relax,” said the Delegate,
“We are programmed to receive.
“You can check out any time you like,
“But you can never leave.”

 

With apologies to the Eagles.