Some News And A Permanent Guest-Post

Unfortunately, estimable bloggers "Harvey" and "AnitaXanaxNow" have decided to wait a while before joining Kelso's Nuts. That, however, has not stopped a brave soul from joining the fray. His nom-de-blog is Gary's Boner, because (both of us being 'Mats fans of old) if there's a Kelso's Nuts there ought to be a Gary's Boner. Gary tells me that I'm not going to like his post. That I'm going to find it politically offensive and I have every right to censor it. Fuck that shit. This guy is a serious thinker and writer and I've already voiced my approval for Clark Clifford's entreaty to read both The Nation and The Weekly Standard. I also approve of the inclusion in Jonestown of Johnny Wingnut http://johnnywingnut.wordpress.com/ Furthermore, HELL thinks highly of Right Wing Republian Media Lizzy! http://insidedcandredcarpets.blogspot.com/, so what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

As usual, there is no censorship on Kelso's Nuts. My first reading of Gary's Boner's first post here will be yours. I take no credit for his brilliance, nor blame for his errors. As in my favorite 1970s United Way commercial with LA Rams FS Nolan Cromwell and Sylvester Stallone as "Rocky," the Boner can always take a lesson. Or give one. So, be neither sparing if you disagree nor sensitive if you don't like his response.

Kelso's Nuts love you

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My old friend Kelso has kindly offered me a chance to guest host, and I decided that it would do him and his readers a disservice to act as an “amen corner” for his own opinions. Instead, let me take the festivities a little to the right for some straight talk on unions, economic growth, etc.

First, to establish my bona fides, I am a registered Democrat and I grew up in a union household – my father belonged to the printers’ local, and I certainly benefited from the solid wages, medical care, etc. However I also saw with my own eyes some of the, let’s call them “productivity disenhancements” that arose from his union status, for example his absolute delight when he got “laid off” and could thus collect most of his paycheck for a couple of weeks while hanging around at home. (Presumably his company had to employ more men than it needed, leading to them cycling in and out of work.) If I use the phrase “no-show union job” you will think of the Sopranos, but it seems to me that pay for reduced work not only is not aberrational, but actually integral to the union lifestyle. (As an aside, I think the funniest Sopranos moment is when Chrissy drives up to a union construction site singing, “If I were a carpenter, and you were a douchebag.”)

Going back to “what the union did for me,” yes, we were lucky that my father got into one – via nepotism – but what about all the families that couldn’t? If some Dominican immigrant arrived in New York with mad typesetting skills, but didn’t have a friend in the union – or maybe they just didn’t like his color – where was the fairness in stopping him from plying his trade? For that matter, if Dick Wolf spotted you on the street and said you were perfect to play the killer in an episode of “Law and Order – Enlarged Prostate Division”, should you be shut out because you’re not in SAG? And hey, why is law school three years long? I went, and 18 months would’ve been plenty. Why is it torture to get an MD, or an architect’s license, requiring the acquisition of tons of extraneous knowledge that has little bearing on competence in the profession? I can tell you why: to exclude new people and support pricing power, as all guilds have done since the Middle Ages.

More generally, and crucially, is the union/guild system one that promotes the overall growth and welfare of a society? On this subject the best thing I have read is Mancur Olson’s “Rise and Decline of Nations,” of which Wikipedia has a good summary:

[S]mall distributional coalitions tend to form over time in countries. Groups like cotton-farmers, steel-producers, and labor unions will have the incentives to form political lobbies and influence policies in their favor. These policies will tend to be protectionist and anti-technology, and will therefore hurt economic growth; but since the benefits of these policies are selective incentives concentrated amongst the few coalitions’ members, while the costs are diffused throughout the whole population, the "Logic" dictates that there will be little public resistance to them. Hence as time goes on, and these distributional coalitions accumulate in greater and greater numbers, the nation burdened by them will fall into economic decline.

Olson supports his theory with much statistical evidence of the far stronger economic performance in the post-WW II period by countries with less unionization and fewer restraints on trade, compared to those with more. In recent years I personally have participated as an investor in numerous “economic miracle” countries run by young supply-siders, such as Estonia (no corporate or capital gains tax; flat income tax; limited if any unions).

As an example of the catastrophic decline of a nation, Olson makes a fascinating study of the Great Depression, arguing that its principal cause was Herbert Hoover’s promotion of trade associations in the 1920’s when he was Secretary of Commerce, to the extent that they “were established in virtually every major industry and in many minor ones….” These associations lobbied for massive tariffs, setting off a chain reaction in which trading partners retaliated and exports fell, while domestic spending also fell, largely because oligopolies in the manufacturing sector prevented price reductions proportionate to the decline in demand. I won’t go through the whole story, but anyone running for President should be required to read it, especially vest-pocket populists and neo-protectionists like John Edwards and Mike Huckabee.

At the time Olson published “Rise and Decline,” in 1982, he had to use European countries to support his theory, but the greatest example of a post-union economy was just getting started in the U.S., as Reagan had broken PATCO (air traffic controllers’ union) and the Hormel strike was only two years away. (Re Hormel: I know Midwesterners who were so stunned as the strike ground to its miserable conclusion that their entire life-plan was redirected to the “knowledge economy,” resulting in the 1980’s intellectual ferment in Minnesota. I recommend Barbara Kopple’s superb documentary “American Dream,” about Hormel.) In any case, the U.S.’ amazing economic performance since 1982 may well be the best proof of Olson’s theory, as 25 years of almost continuous growth has in large part derived from a flexible labor force that has adapted to virtually any economic conditions – including the current ones.

In this regard, of all the pundits who forecast doom for the U.S. (including your man Kelso), saying stuff like “we don’t produce anything anymore” (in fact we are still the #1 export economy in the world), how many have gone on the road to find out what Americans are actually doing at work? Well, I propose that we rent a bus like some modern-day economic Merry Pranksters, and drive from Colorado Springs down to Phoenix, over to Nashville, and back up to Chatham, N.J., and see for ourselves. And the inevitable Tom Wolfe book about us, “The Venti Latte Thought-Experiment.”