Society/Culture Unionism is holding Australia back

[Contra Mundum]

There are a lot of fantastic people in unions who care about the people they are employed to look after. These people do not drive labour policy though, it is usually people from militant unions.

Our free market system will not work well with fixed labour costs, it distorts price and makes many industries not competitive to other global products and services where there is a significant gap in labour cost.

This will systematically destroy our manufacturing sector and we are already seeing an increasing loss of work in the manufacturing sector where employers are looking more towards automation to reduce labour costs.

We are a nation with a socialist mindset who employs a capitalist system and it isn't working. I think it is only a matter of time until Australia becomes a socialist nation< Hopefully I will be dead before that happens because I don't think it will be a peaceful transition, nobody gives up power.

However, while we remain a capitalist nation, socialist policy will distort the functionality of the capitalist economic system and will prevent it from operating as it is intended to function. It is like distorting some of the cogs in a clock, it is going to eventually stop working.

Good troll Tas - yes, yes the presence of trade unions will force Australia to become socialist - even Lenin did not believe Australian unions had it in them.

 

[Tas]

Good troll Tas - yes, yes the presence of trade unions will force Australia to become socialist - even Lenin did not believe Australian unions had it in them.

It is not a troll.

Australians in general are a lot more left than say Americans. We had generations of Australians who sacrificed a lot for the future wealth of the country, for a better distribution of wealth. We have always opted to make life better for the less fortunate.

While I may come off as a raving right wing lunatic, I have voted mostly for Labor until I went informal once Labor sold out on their principals. It doesn't matter which way I vote, it doesn't really impact me if centre-left government is elected or not. Anyone capable of earning a good income will do well enough for themselves irrespective of the party that is elected.

I just think socialism is a better mechanical system for our views as a nation. I would support a change of economic system as long as the socialist model adopted a heavy incentive based system with a de-centralised where ownership and profit becomes more a product of productivity and efficiency and each business determines policy rather at government level.

It is widely acknowledged that Australia and USA are heading towards socialism, Obama was a socialist and haven't seen any evidence he has changed, the course they are on is for debt to collapse the economy with the vast majority of the population dependent on welfare or employed by the government, 60% of Americans now form that category and they are almost beyond the point of no return.

It is why Abbott is desperately sacking anyone he can effectively get rid off the government payroll but he will find he creates more problems than he resolves and those he displaces are in marginal seats, Labor party will be overhauled and filled with more militant union people and go back towards more of their roots and Abbott who is as popular as the black plague will probably find he will become Howard 2.0 and get kicked out of his own seat.

I think the world is ready for a modern industrialised western socialist government, but i think the USA will beat us to that.

 

[Contra Mundum]

It is not a troll.

Australians in general are a lot more left than say Americans. We had generations of Australians who sacrificed a lot for the future wealth of the country, for a better distribution of wealth. We have always opted to make life better for the less fortunate.

While I may come off as a raving right wing lunatic, I have voted mostly for Labor until I went informal once Labor sold out on their principals. It doesn't matter which way I vote, it doesn't really impact me if centre-left government is elected or not. Anyone capable of earning a good income will do well enough for themselves irrespective of the party that is elected.

I just think socialism is a better mechanical system for our views as a nation. I would support a change of economic system as long as the socialist model adopted a heavy incentive based system with a de-centralised where ownership and profit becomes more a product of productivity and efficiency and each business determines policy rather at government level.

It is widely acknowledged that Australia and USA are heading towards socialism, Obama was a socialist and haven't seen any evidence he has changed, the course they are on is for debt to collapse the economy with the vast majority of the population dependent on welfare or employed by the government, 60% of Americans now form that category and they are almost beyond the point of no return.

It is why Abbott is desperately sacking anyone he can effectively get rid off the government payroll but he will find he creates more problems than he resolves and those he displaces are in marginal seats, Labor party will be overhauled and filled with more militant union people and go back towards more of their roots and Abbott who is as popular as the black plague will probably find he will become Howard 2.0 and get kicked out of his own seat.

I think the world is ready for a modern industrialised western socialist government, but i think the USA will beat us to that.

Here is the Article Lenin wrote in 1913 entitled "in Australia" for those who do not know it

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Leninaus.html

 

[Tas]

Here is the Article Lenin wrote in 1913 entitled "in Australia" for those who do not know it

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Leninaus.html

Lenin was foremost a politician, a shoddy one at that, I am sure his article was more about justifying why Australia was evolutionary different to England, Europe or USA but why it was seen as more of a humanitarian form of capitalism. Given we were really the only colony to get a peaceful federation by 1901 and we were a rich nation based primarily on agriculture.

Australia has changed dramatically, after federation tax was around 5% of the GDP and stayed fairly constant until the introduction of the income tax act in 1915, to fund WW1. In 1915 companies were only taxed on retained earnings, that is the profit after dividends, we then started to pay 11% of GDP in taxation. In the 1940s this was changed to profits before dividends to fund WW2 and we were then paying 22% of GDP in taxation.

We never went back to paying lower tax after the wars, it is very important once you give government power, in any form, it is incredibly hard to get it back from them.

The proportion of tax to GDP is now up to 30% when you include state, territory and federal forms of revenue generation and this is a trend that is going higher and higher each year, irrespective of whatever reforms they have introduced. Our government has become a socialist mechanism as it has adopted many social programs which require increasingly higher amounts of funding.

We will get to the point, like the USA has where they can not fund the programs internally any longer and will have to borrow to keep the pyramid scheme from collapsing, and it eventually collapses and a socialist system will replace it.

 

[Power Raid]

Obviously No Ticket No start is a breach of the law in Australia and of the ILO Freedom of Association convention - what do you think the ABCC and its successor do all day - prevent it from happening

it good to see we have organisations to protect workers from the organisations claiming to protect and preserve the interests of workers!

we live in a strange world

 

[Power Raid]

it's funny watching some of the people on bigfooty - and IRL for the matter - who talk about wealth and the economy etc,. and think they are climbing the corporate ladder... a handful will get through because they need to let a few succeed otherwise it becomes blatantly obvious how futile the whole thing is, but most will just crushed on the way. the only disappointing thing is they are willing to support a system that crushes a huge chunk of society, whilst almost all of the remaining participants are kept with their heads just above water. but hey, anything to be part of that 5% yeah?

????????

only a limp dick with more ambition than perspective ever tries to climb a corporate ladder. All they will find is they will trade their life away to make others money.

Anyone who is anyone will get out of the system and build something for themselves.

Don't get jealous about what other people do. Simply get off your butt, stop worrying about others and focus on doing something positive for yourself and society.

 

[CLUBMEDhurst]

Only if you fall for the trap of talking about productivity of an employee, rather than the productivity of the enterprise in which the employee is working.

An employee can make his widgets quicker, and to a higher quality, but if the market no longer wants to buy this companies widgets any more, the employer isn't going to make money, and the employee won't be able to demand sustainable pay rises, no matter how "productive" he has become. It doesn't matter how well a factory worker in Adelaide produces a Commodore, if no one wants to buy Commodores any more. In such circumstances, the traditional view of individual productivity can not be the driver for the justification of remuneration levels.

On the other hand, an enterprise which is flexible, and reacts to market demands more quickly than its competitors is likely to grow its profits, and employees can make a case for demanding higher wages for their contribution to the health of their employer, without compromising financial viability.

Putting a number or KPI on an employee and calling it "productivity" misses the point.

What if you are working in an industry where the only competition is for research grants? Is there not a place for collective bargaining in those industies?

 

[DeanoT]

What if you are working in an industry where the only competition is for research grants? Is there not a place for collective bargaining in those industies?

I wasn't commenting on collective bargaining, I was playing devil's advocate to the notion that employee remuneration should be tied to employee productivity.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Lenin was foremost a politician, a shoddy one at that, I am sure his article was more about justifying why Australia was evolutionary different to England, Europe or USA but why it was seen as more of a humanitarian form of capitalism. Given we were really the only colony to get a peaceful federation by 1901 and we were a rich nation based primarily on agriculture.

Australia has changed dramatically, after federation tax was around 5% of the GDP and stayed fairly constant until the introduction of the income tax act in 1915, to fund WW1. In 1915 companies were only taxed on retained earnings, that is the profit after dividends, we then started to pay 11% of GDP in taxation. In the 1940s this was changed to profits before dividends to fund WW2 and we were then paying 22% of GDP in taxation.

We never went back to paying lower tax after the wars, it is very important once you give government power, in any form, it is incredibly hard to get it back from them.

The proportion of tax to GDP is now up to 30% when you include state, territory and federal forms of revenue generation and this is a trend that is going higher and higher each year, irrespective of whatever reforms they have introduced. Our government has become a socialist mechanism as it has adopted many social programs which require increasingly higher amounts of funding.

We will get to the point, like the USA has where they can not fund the programs internally any longer and will have to borrow to keep the pyramid scheme from collapsing, and it eventually collapses and a socialist system will replace it.

I am with you

 

[Sanders]

a handful will get through because they need to let a few succeed otherwise it becomes blatantly obvious how futile the whole thing

They?

 

[evo]

Here is the Article Lenin wrote in 1913 entitled "in Australia" for those who do not know it

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Leninaus.html

Interesting that he picked Labor for phoneys at such an early juncture.

When he wrote that Australians had the highest standard of living in the world.

 

[blackcat]

contra you forget to sign off. your epilogue supposed to be "... comrade."

me, i liked the murdoch caricature Williamson paints, even worse than a meds version.

 

[MUYB]

Came for the discussion on unionism. Stayed to hear someone ranting about Obama the 'socialist'.

 

[nut]

Lenin was foremost a politician, a shoddy one at that, I am sure his article was more about justifying why Australia was evolutionary different to England, Europe or USA but why it was seen as more of a humanitarian form of capitalism. Given we were really the only colony to get a peaceful federation by 1901 and we were a rich nation based primarily on agriculture.

Australia has changed dramatically, after federation tax was around 5% of the GDP and stayed fairly constant until the introduction of the income tax act in 1915, to fund WW1. In 1915 companies were only taxed on retained earnings, that is the profit after dividends, we then started to pay 11% of GDP in taxation. In the 1940s this was changed to profits before dividends to fund WW2 and we were then paying 22% of GDP in taxation.

We never went back to paying lower tax after the wars, it is very important once you give government power, in any form, it is incredibly hard to get it back from them.

The proportion of tax to GDP is now up to 30% when you include state, territory and federal forms of revenue generation and this is a trend that is going higher and higher each year, irrespective of whatever reforms they have introduced. Our government has become a socialist mechanism as it has adopted many social programs which require increasingly higher amounts of funding.

We will get to the point, like the USA has where they can not fund the programs internally any longer and will have to borrow to keep the pyramid scheme from collapsing, and it eventually collapses and a socialist system will replace it.

What you reckon we got for those increases in Taxes??? nothing? lol

 

[Tas]

What you reckon we got for those increases in Taxes??? nothing? lol

We have got some infrastructure, but we have evolved a quasi-socialist government who now just spends money on shit so it doesn't have to give it back to those it takes from.

 

[nut]

Capitalism Should pay back to society... one of those methods of pay back is wages to those that produce the productivity that the capitalists benefit from. The other is taxation.

Allowing "the market" to decide what a person is worth when it comes to productivity is favoured heavily towards those with the most power and the most money.

Unions give the workers collective power to force those with power a fare days pay.

 

[nut]

We have got some infrastructure, but we have evolved a quasi-socialist government who now just spends money on shit so it doesn't have to give it back to those it takes from.

Like what??? if you have problems with government spending that that should be the issue... not how much power unions have? Would you scrap unions and then stop spending money on Fair work Australia? What other useless shit does the government spend money on that would better given to the corporates to give them more power to control us "slaves"?

People have a pretty warped sense of what government is in this country.....

 

[Power Raid]

Capitalism Should pay back to society... one of those methods of pay back is wages to those that produce the productivity that the capitalists benefit from. The other is taxation.

Allowing "the market" to decide what a person is worth when it comes to productivity is favoured heavily towards those with the most power and the most money.

Unions give the workers collective power to force those with power a fare days pay.

I met another great union official this morning for breakfast.

He has spent a total of 17 years in jail for crimes including the 4-day torture of his daughter's boyfriend and doing some art work on someone's face with a Stanley knife.

Geez, these union guys are about benefiting society. I trust you can justify their actions by saying the victims deserved it?

 

[Tas]

Like what??? if you have problems with government spending that that should be the issue... not how much power unions have? Would you scrap unions and then stop spending money on Fair work Australia? What other useless shit does the government spend money on that would better given to the corporates to give them more power to control us "slaves"?

People have a pretty warped sense of what government is in this country.....

We did once have a capitalist economy, it is now a crony capitalist economy which is swinging towards a socialist economic system.

I don't care if we choose capitalism, socialism or communism. In every type of economic system there are important mechanics which you are required to follow if the economic system is going to function properly.

We interfere too much with the mechanisms of our economic system. In the markets we do not because we can not afford to the market tends to do okay. Wherever we interfere we invariably **** up that market, like the automotive industry which we have been ****ing with since the 70s to try and 'save' it. It has just been a cosmic waste of taxpayer money.

There are things which is beneficial that the government provide services for, but overall the government has progressively taken on too much power, has siphoned too much money from the public and dictated where that money is to be spent.

If people want a more even distribution of wealth then people should push for a socialist government, that way you can adopt socialist policies without it ****ing up the economy.

I don't mind if we change to a socialist system, given we are part way there already. However, we lack the proper mechanics to allow our socialist policy to work within a crony capitalist economic system.

White collar work follows capitalism closer than blue collar work does, there is enough demand for white collar work that the minimum wage is a non-factor, there are more or less no militant white collar unions.

The problem we have isn't the minimum wages, it is the effective value of goods produced by blue collar workers vs services provided by white collar workers. It is hard to justify blue collar wages when they produce products of low value. However, those products are often essential. It is why farmers are doing it tough, especially dairy farmers, while we have a supermarket oligopoly which has price wars destroying most of the competition and using things as milk selling at two bucks how can you say the farmers are going to get paid $15 dollars an hour for their work when they are borderline going out of business running families on slave wages.

You buy a product which required a lot of labour and it effectively has a low value compared to me shuffling papers around and punching numbers on a computer.

We want to interfere and say everyone should get a decent wage, but their industry isn't being destroyed by people judging low value, it is low value because the supply exists in sufficient quantity to drive the price down.

So what happens when we artificially inflate cost due to fixing labour costs? People outside can ship vast quantities of the same product here and because our labour costs is so high and theirs is so low they can afford to pay for expensive shipping and still undercut our local products. Our industry then struggles to compete and asks the government for money to help them survive and will still usually die a horrible death eventually or industrialise so they can massively reduce their labour cost running minimal number of employees.

In the end everyone loses if our industries die out altogether. Even the ones that survive do do not employ the number of people they used to.

I am not sure if you work in the public sector, I have done a lot of contract work in the public sector. They have a budget. If they do not spend their entire budget then their budget is cut the next year, so they spend their budget, regardless if they need to or not. We have a lot of waste in our government. LNP government will cut waste in areas which will not necessarily cost them a lot of votes, ie helping poor schmucks that likely will vote labor. They wont touch chronic waste in areas that would cost them votes. LP is not really a cost cutting government.

 

[nut]

We did once have a capitalist economy, it is now a crony capitalist economy which is swinging towards a socialist economic system.

I don't care if we choose capitalism, socialism or communism. In every type of economic system there are important mechanics which you are required to follow if the economic system is going to function properly.

We interfere too much with the mechanisms of our economic system. In the markets we do not because we can not afford to the market tends to do okay. Wherever we interfere we invariably **** up that market, like the automotive industry which we have been ******* with since the 70s to try and 'save' it. It has just been a cosmic waste of taxpayer money.

There are things which is beneficial that the government provide services for, but overall the government has progressively taken on too much power, has siphoned too much money from the public and dictated where that money is to be spent.

If people want a more even distribution of wealth then people should push for a socialist government, that way you can adopt socialist policies without it ******* up the economy.

I don't mind if we change to a socialist system, given we are part way there already. However, we lack the proper mechanics to allow our socialist policy to work within a crony capitalist economic system.

White collar work follows capitalism closer than blue collar work does, there is enough demand for white collar work that the minimum wage is a non-factor, there are more or less no militant white collar unions.

The problem we have isn't the minimum wages, it is the effective value of goods produced by blue collar workers vs services provided by white collar workers. It is hard to justify blue collar wages when they produce products of low value. However, those products are often essential. It is why farmers are doing it tough, especially dairy farmers, while we have a supermarket oligopoly which has price wars destroying most of the competition and using things as milk selling at two bucks how can you say the farmers are going to get paid $15 dollars an hour for their work when they are borderline going out of business running families on slave wages.

You buy a product which required a lot of labour and it effectively has a low value compared to me shuffling papers around and punching numbers on a computer.

We want to interfere and say everyone should get a decent wage, but their industry isn't being destroyed by people judging low value, it is low value because the supply exists in sufficient quantity to drive the price down.

So what happens when we artificially inflate cost due to fixing labour costs? People outside can ship vast quantities of the same product here and because our labour costs is so high and theirs is so low they can afford to pay for expensive shipping and still undercut our local products. Our industry then struggles to compete and asks the government for money to help them survive and will still usually die a horrible death eventually or industrialise so they can massively reduce their labour cost running minimal number of employees.

In the end everyone loses if our industries die out altogether. Even the ones that survive do do not employ the number of people they used to.

I am not sure if you work in the public sector, I have done a lot of contract work in the public sector. They have a budget. If they do not spend their entire budget then their budget is cut the next year, so they spend their budget, regardless if they need to or not. We have a lot of waste in our government. LNP government will cut waste in areas which will not necessarily cost them a lot of votes, ie helping poor schmucks that likely will vote labor. They wont touch chronic waste in areas that would cost them votes. LP is not really a cost cutting government.

The fact is there will be waste in the private sector and the public sector..... alteast with public "wasteful" spending the money goes back into the community.... not too the financial elite in NY. As a nation has moved further away from Socialism in the last 20 years than ever before... Infact labour as a party has moved further right then the Libs have moved left.

Socialism on its own wont work, you need some of the competitive attributes that comes with capitalism in todays world... if we didn't then we could get rid of currency all together because everyone would "put in" into society and get what they "put in" back as a reward. At present we have a system that uses money as the "reward" .... and we are expected to use "that money" to look after our selves. How well we are able to look after our selves is determined by how much more money we have then the "average", because the average is what drives a standard.

 

[nut]

I met another great union official this morning for breakfast.

He has spent a total of 17 years in jail for crimes including the 4-day torture of his daughter's boyfriend and doing some art work on someone's face with a Stanley knife.

Geez, these union guys are about benefiting society. I trust you can justify their actions by saying the victims deserved it?

yer and there is no such thing as corporate crime is there?

 

[nut]

Why Capitalism will eventually fail is that requires growth.... and with out growth it will crash. And the single biggest thing that will destroy the planet is humans unsustainable population growth, which is the basis of capitalism.

 

[Sanders]

The fact is there will be waste in the private sector and the public sector..... alteast with public "wasteful" spending the money goes back into the community....

Nah wasteful public spending does not go into community it goes into the wages of a very few government employees & welfare beneficiaries

It benefits a few at the expense of the many with negative incentives for ambition & productivity

You have to remember there is no such thing as government money, only other people's money

 

[nut]

Nah wasteful public spending does not go into community it goes into the wages of a very few government employees & welfare beneficiaries

It benefits a few at the expense of the many with negative incentives for ambition & productivity

You have to remember there is no such thing as government money, only other people's money

...and gets re-circulated.

Is welfare wasteful spending??

 

[Sanders]

...and gets re-circulated.

Is welfare wasteful spending??

In excess of basic social priorities? absolutely it is.