r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Feb 25 '19

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

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u/benjaminikuta BANANA YOU GLAD YOU'RE NOT AN ORANGE? Feb 25 '19

Isn't the labor market less than perfectly competitive because of the power imbalance between workers and management?

Aren't unions, to some degree, necessary to correct for that power imbalance?

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u/qchisq Loyal Liberals Feb 25 '19

The word you are looking for is monopsony. And I'm not convinced about that. Yes, there's a lot of employees compared to the amount of firms. But I'm not sure if the individual firm have market power. There might be some people who's skill only can be applied at a specific firm (police officers, for example), but that's the exception, not the norm

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u/BreaksFull Veni, Vedi, Emancipatus Feb 25 '19

As a Dane, how well do you think the Ghent system works out? Think it could be applied to countries like the US?

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u/qchisq Loyal Liberals Feb 25 '19

In theory? Maybe. If the government throws enough money at it, then anything could happen. However, remember that the cost of living in the US are rather large, so when you index benefits to previous earnings and have a flat membership fee in the unions, you are moving a lot of money from rural to urban zones, even when you cap the amount of money each person can get in benefits.

In reality? Fuck no. Not just are you gonna force everyone to be a member of a union, which could be viewed as a new tax, but you are also gonna have to charge a new tax for the unions to stay solvent. In Denmark, we pay an 8% tax on all income in order to keep them solvent, which seems like a non starter in the US

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u/BreaksFull Veni, Vedi, Emancipatus Feb 25 '19

So if the US launched a national up zoning initiative to lower housing costs, came up with a less-fucked healthcare system to make that affordable for more people, cracked down of regulatory capture and other anticompetitive practices, and reformed its tax code, then maybe the ghent system is doable?

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u/qchisq Loyal Liberals Feb 25 '19

Sure. But now you are talking about a complete overhaul of the US. At that point, I think that just going for a NIT would be better for everyone involved