Milton Friedman on Labor Unions - Free To Choose

In this classic narration from Free To Choose, Milton Friedman explains why labor unions can only get improved wages, benefits and conditions at the expense of others. Competition in the market has produced tremendous gains for workers over the years -- much more than any labor union (which is nothing more than a labor cartel designed to exclude workers and drive up costs for consumers and taxpayers).

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• Milton Friedman
• Labor Unions
• Wisconsin
• public sector employees
• government
• labor cartel

[CosmicFork]

Let's talk about Friedman's ideological consequences on the real world, as seen in Reaganomics. The effort to undermine and destroy Labor Unions peaked in the "Reagan Years". I lived through those years, and only Margaret Thatcher succeeded in smashing down workers in England better! Managements goal has always been to undermine the basic rights guaranteed by The 1935 Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act. The basic method of this Anti-Union War is illegally firing thousands of workers!

[TheKeith1337]

Um, sorry Uncle Milton, labor is a market like any other. If workers band together for higher wages, they're somehow taking something from their employer or other workers? Really? So by that logic, when a business or organization owns and sells a scarce product, it's taking from money that consumers and other businesses can spend elsewhere. So it's okay for business to benefit from scarcity and free association but not workers? What fucking hypocrite.

[leeknivek]

@TheKeith1337 I'm thinking he only meant that if they used to government to force businesses to comply with union demands it was wrong.

[jozzo6]

@LogicalFlawDetector Correct, even if your eloquence could be improved greatly...the failures of governmental favouritism and assistance are direct causes of the financial crises we see in the world today.

[diurdi]

@TheKeith1337 Paul "we need a fake alien invasion" Krugman? Paul "9/11 has positive economic consequences" Krugman?

Get out of here.

[diurdi]

@TheKeith1337 Unions enjoy legal powers above just "freedom of association".

Unions are cartels, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's when the government empowers a cartel with extra legal powers that they become a problem.

[LogicalFlawDetector]

When your head is *occupying* your ass, it is pretty hard to comprehend economic reality. Let me explain it for you, occupunk: market equilibrium wages aren't static, they are dynamic as they are a function of prices in other markets. There is no single static market wage for one year. All *prices*--including wages, which are just prices of labor--fluctuate based on supply and demand. I don't waste time schooling impudent Marxist pricks. However, you are one exceptionally dumb occupunk.

[TheKeith1337]

@TheKeith1337 As for "competitive market levels," I don't typically respond to pseudo-economic garbled nonsense, but please enlighten me: What exactly was the "competitive labor market level" for any industry or entity last year? What data and formulae did you use?

[TheKeith1337]

@LogicalFlawDetector My, my how angry. I should be properly deferential to a Nobel Laureate? I do hope you go around to every video with Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz and chastise people calling them Marxist filth, too.

Cont'd...

[LogicalFlawDetector]

@TheKeith1337

Executives, being small in number, get paid the high market wage. The supply of CEOs is relatively substantially small; but the demand has increased over the past three decades. This created the high wages for CEOs. There are no wage floors for CEOs. Therefore, it is Pareto efficient. Unions on the other hand are cartels which push compensation well above market wages and reduce efficiency. Now, this is Pareto inefficient. Busting unions is the right thing to do.

[LogicalFlawDetector]

@bigswano

Marxist faggot, increased capital investment and demand for skilled workers by firms created higher wages and the middle class. Fuck you, you union dick-sucking faggot.

[LogicalFlawDetector]

@CosmicFork

So your central point is that you think workers were *illegally* fired, therefore unions should have unlimited monopoly power in labor markets. Nothing wrong with firing useless public sector employees. The ideological consequences of Friedman have been indubitably positive. Real GDP per capita since the 1980s grew at 2.5% each year--well above the long term rate of 1.8%.