This is probably as good a place and time as any to reflect on how everything went as terribly wrong as it had to get in order for clowns like Trump to not be laughed out of politics.
Politics had to fall very far, very hard, to get to the point where enough people felt like voting at all was a waste of time- and probably the biggest single factor I can point out is when the Neoliberals took over the Democrats, American Labor lost its only champion, Antitrust law lost its only advocate, and both major parties in the USA essentially became handmaidens to corporate power. While this was happening, the GOP, long since a dark-money puppet organization, abandoned any pretense of doing anything in the public interest and became a full-throated howl of corruption and voter suppression and gerrymandering.
When both major parties in a duopoly system take turns tag-teaming the working class for their donors’ profit margins, you can expect that working class to radicalize, leftwards and rightwards, it’s what happens every time when a working class realizes it’s being objectively fucked. There was a reason Weimar Germany was so full of left-socialists and right-fascists, the middle had thoroughly failed and it turns out that when given the choice, liberals will always choose fascism over socialism.
This is true and very welcome, but TBH that’s a very low bar to clear and a long time coming. Up until the Biden admin started taking action, union protections have been steadily eroded since the Reagan admin. and with that, union membership went on a decades-long collapsing trend (and with it, so did labor’s buying power).
The point to my above post was that it had to get very dark for a candidate like Trump to get any oxygen whatsoever, and if there’s one way to drive despair in democracy, it’s to make people that grew up expecting to live middle-class lives into poor people.
Unions shouldn’t even be necessary. There are more voters than there are companies, by a very wide margin. The fact that enough people in the right places are able to be convinced to vote against improving their own conditions is really the problem.
Are they stronger due to changes by the current government? Or are they stronger because the economy is weaking and more and more people are rembering that forming/joining unions can help improve their working conditions?
Some unions are stronger. I’m in a union and I don’t even have paid sick time after we just signed our first contract post covid. It makes me feel like it’s kind of useless, but it’s still better than no union. It’s an extremely mediocre feeling.
This is probably as good a place and time as any to reflect on how everything went as terribly wrong as it had to get in order for clowns like Trump to not be laughed out of politics.
Politics had to fall very far, very hard, to get to the point where enough people felt like voting at all was a waste of time- and probably the biggest single factor I can point out is when the Neoliberals took over the Democrats, American Labor lost its only champion, Antitrust law lost its only advocate, and both major parties in the USA essentially became handmaidens to corporate power. While this was happening, the GOP, long since a dark-money puppet organization, abandoned any pretense of doing anything in the public interest and became a full-throated howl of corruption and voter suppression and gerrymandering.
When both major parties in a duopoly system take turns tag-teaming the working class for their donors’ profit margins, you can expect that working class to radicalize, leftwards and rightwards, it’s what happens every time when a working class realizes it’s being objectively fucked. There was a reason Weimar Germany was so full of left-socialists and right-fascists, the middle had thoroughly failed and it turns out that when given the choice, liberals will always choose fascism over socialism.
Biden is the most pro labor president in decades.
That, that’s the exact problem he is pointing out.
This is true and very welcome, but TBH that’s a very low bar to clear and a long time coming. Up until the Biden admin started taking action, union protections have been steadily eroded since the Reagan admin. and with that, union membership went on a decades-long collapsing trend (and with it, so did labor’s buying power).
The point to my above post was that it had to get very dark for a candidate like Trump to get any oxygen whatsoever, and if there’s one way to drive despair in democracy, it’s to make people that grew up expecting to live middle-class lives into poor people.
The most pro labor president in decades being an union buster just reinforces the point.
Unions shouldn’t even be necessary. There are more voters than there are companies, by a very wide margin. The fact that enough people in the right places are able to be convinced to vote against improving their own conditions is really the problem.
Unions are stronger than they’ve been in decades. Stop falling for clickbait and look at the actual results.
Are they stronger due to changes by the current government? Or are they stronger because the economy is weaking and more and more people are rembering that forming/joining unions can help improve their working conditions?
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-workers-rights-back/
Many of the positive changes can be traced to this.
I don’t disagree that that may help, it’s hard to draw a direct link between the two with the data I can see.
I guess we’ll have to wait for more data to come out.
The data I can find shows no improvement to union rates over Biden’s term https://www.statista.com/statistics/195349/union-membership-rate-of-employees-in-the-us-since-2000/
Some unions are stronger. I’m in a union and I don’t even have paid sick time after we just signed our first contract post covid. It makes me feel like it’s kind of useless, but it’s still better than no union. It’s an extremely mediocre feeling.
The major changes and gains have all happened in the last few months. It’ll take some time for the effects to spread out.
Those are decades of being wildly off course not just in labor but in environment, regulation, infrastructure, and innovation.
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Mmmhmm