–Sebastian
This is an interesting story about unions.
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney last week won the latest round in a bitter internal clash over the future of the labor movement by insisting that more money go for future campaigns to unseat Republicans than for trying to shore up the federation’s sagging membership.
That showdown pitted Sweeney, AFSCME’s Gerald McEntee and the Steelworkers’ Leo Gerard against such powerhouse dissidents as the Teamsters’ James P. Hoffa, the Service Employees’ Andrew L. Stern and the Laborers’ Terence M. O’Sullivan. Since the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations 50 years ago, labor has been in a relentless downward spiral, and factions have bitterly squabbled for years over how best to reverse the trend. Today, the most urgent question among labor leaders and experts is whether a victory by either Sweeney’s forces or the dissidents will be enough to pull organized labor out of a nose dive that began when Sweeney, 70, was a 20-year-old student at Queens College.
"These are the darkest days that I have ever seen for American workers across the United States," said McEntee, one of Sweeney’s strongest allies.
John Wilhelm, a president of the recently merged Unite Here union, who is contemplating a challenge to Sweeney in the July election for president, added that "we are in deep trouble."
By a 2 to 1 margin, the AFL-CIO’s executive committee last week rejected the dissidents’ proposal to boost spending on union organizing and membership drives by roughly $35 million. Instead, it adopted the Sweeney plan to nearly double spending on political and legislative mobilization, raising the AFL-CIO’s annual commitment to these activities to $45 million.
While the failing labor unions have been wedded to the Democratic Party for decades, this may be one of their last gasps in this current form. Abandoning new membership drives in favor of gripping more tightly to a party that many of their members detest isn’t likely to help in the long run (or even in the short run). Labor groups will probably exist so long as there is labor in the modern society, but that doesn’t mean that they have anything to do with the AFL/CIO. I suspect that the big labor unions are a victim of their own success. They succeeded in implementing OSHA standards throughout the nation which has vastly diminished the physical protection needs they used to provide for. Their stranglehold on the auto industry left them with high paid workers in companies that couldn’t produce good value for a good price. I don’t know what a good modern union will look like, but I’m pretty sure we won’t find it by looking at the AFL/CIO.
$45MM/yr is $180MM per presidential election cycle; that makes the AFL/CIO alone, under the new regime, a force comparable to all individual donors combined.
There have been some legal complaints by union members who don’t want their dues spent supporting (Democratic) candidates they oppose. Does anyone have a feeling for whether those are likely to go anywhere? The stakes (on both sides) have just increased.
While the failing labor unions have been wedded to the Democratic Party for decades, this may be one of their last gasps in this current form.
When was the last time the Republican Party put forth any policy that was good for the average worker in this country?
Labor groups will probably exist so long as there is labor in the modern society
Not if the Republican Party gets their way.
By a 2 to 1 margin, the AFL-CIO’s executive committee last week rejected the dissidents’ proposal to boost spending on union organizing and membership drives by roughly $35 million.
Short-Sighted & Stupid!!!
There was an article in the NYT Magazine in January about Andrew Stern. I don’t remember the details, but it sounds like he has an interesting vision for what a good modern union would look like — less combative, negotiate on a regional basis instead of picking off companies one by one, etc.
There have been some legal complaints by union members who don’t want their dues spent supporting (Democratic) candidates they oppose.
IIRC this issue was litigated and won by union members who can now request to have refunded the portion of their dues that would otherwise go to political contributions.
I only wish I could get the same sort of refunds from companies in which I own stock.
I think that current Republican policies (SS ‘reform’, bankruptcy, the stealth attack on standard health insurance, if it gets any coverage) may yet prove Sebastian wrong. That said, I’d much rather see them doing membership drives.
I feel your pain. I actually don’t care all that much about union investment in politics (because I’m not a union guy, mostly), but I do have some issues with the way unions have been used to, for example, artificially elevate pay rates for unskilled labor. If there’s a good reason for doing that, I have yet to hear it.
Because a society in which people who work full time jobs are able to live with comfort and dignity is preferable to one in which they are not?
BBC News is doing a “China Week” coverage. If you want to see the good old days before unions, check it out. Alive and well over there.
If we’re going to start paying people what they’re actually worth, let’s start at the top. Executive salary-to-non executive salary ratios are 400:1.
Someone with a better sense of economics than I can surely explain what it is that executives do that’s worth 400x what support staff does.
Let’s hear it.
“BBC News is doing a “China Week” coverage. If you want to see the good old days before unions, check it out. Alive and well over there.”
That is why I say that they may have hurt themselves by being successful. The average line worker doesn’t have to worry so much about getting injured or killed because of OSHA and their outside politcal gamesmanship has become more prominent.
I’m not entirely convinced. It is far better for unskilled laborerers to become skilled workers rather than rely on the unskilled jobs. Typically we fill unskilled jobs with unexperienced workers (often teenagers). I don’t think it is awful that unskilled work doesn’t make high wages. A couple of decades ago there was a big push in training from labor unions, which if I remember correctly was curtailed when they realized that the skilled workers were leaving the union-style jobs to better themselves with other jobs. This obviously isn’t in the union’s best interest even if it is in the best interest of the worker.
You know, I see this argument made fairly often (that very low wages are unimportant because no one holds a job that bad for a long time) and never, that I remember, with any compelling factual support. In my daily life, I see a lot of middle-aged people pushing brooms and cleaning motel rooms.
A couple of decades ago there was a big push in training from labor unions, which if I remember correctly was curtailed when they realized that the skilled workers were leaving the union-style jobs to better themselves with other jobs.
This is nonsense. First, there are plenty of skilled union jobs; second, to the extent that an organized worker leaves a union job solely because they’ve gotten training that allows them to take a higher status non-union job, they would leave a job opening that the employer would have no reason not to fill, and therefore wouldn’t change the number of workers the union represented. Did you think about this story before you repeated it? I can’t imagine what your source is, but it makes no sense at all.
If departing union workers were always replaced with union workers, there wouldn’t be a huge decline in union jobs year to year. Quite a bit of it may be mechanization, but not all of it is.
Yes, but that has nothing to do with workers leaving jobs because they got training. A worker who leaves a job because they became qualified for a better job leaves a job opening behind them — the opening only goes away if the employer no longer needs to fill it.
Your story, that unions stopped offering training because they realized that the trained workers would leave union jobs, makes no sense whatsoever. What job any particular worker is fitted for has nothing to do with the number of job openings in organized workplaces.
Why make us work at all? Why not just give us the money?
Hands Slarti fire extinguisher to protect himself from burning straw
The strawman, of course, being the suggestion that paying people who are willing to work full-time for their own support a wage that allows them to live in, as Jimmy Stewart once put it, “a couple of decent rooms and a bath, “is at all related to just giving people money for nothing. It’s such a dumb strawman, too, that I’m surprised Slarti came up with it. I’d expect it from some other people.
From the Star Trek archives of unmade eps:
So the enterprise finds a somewhat low-tech planet which gains entry to the Federation. They have free trade. 20 years later the low-tech planet is suppliying all manufactrued goods to the Federation because they have cheap labor. Eventually the Federation collapses when the planet stops buying Federation Treasury bonds.
Are all jobs worth a couple of decent rooms and a bath for a typical work day? One of the reasons the full service gas pump guy has all but vanished in California is that it just isn’t worth it to pay more for gas so that you pay a guy to pump it for you. That doesn’t happen immediately, that happens as fewer and fewer people are willing to pay the premium, fewer and fewer gas stations are willing to pay wages for the job, and eventually it goes away. And frankly there is nothing wrong with that. There are lots of jobs that we just don’t want to pay for. Some of them require so little skill, that untrained workers are just as good as trained ones within a day or so. These aren’t the type of jobs we should expect (or want) people to hang on to for long periods of time.
My, my, Phil, but what a great lot of mind-reading that was. All utter crap, of course, but impressive in scope.
These aren’t the type of jobs we should expect (or want) people to hang on to for long periods of time.
So under your regime we’ve got a number of jobs that pay less than a subsistence wage for a family. Presumably, the worker (assume a single mom) in the family has to work more than one job to actually hit subsistence. Both jobs are, of course, unskilled. So do workers magically acquire skills? Is it a process of osmosis – just skilled people yields skills? Or perhaps you are arguing against unionization but in favor of financial transfers that give unskilled workers both the time and the access to training needed to create skills?
Opportunity costs aren’t just for the upper end of the income bracket.
So is it your position that there’s no gradation of skills? That there’s no way for anyone to actually advance in skill through experience? Curious; nearly all of the manual-labor jobs I’ve ever held were pretty chock-full of opportunity to advance one’s skills. Maybe I’m an anomaly, though.
Why make us work at all? Why not just give us the money?
I was wondering the same thing. There’s a Forbes list of highly paid execs we were talking about here. This one guy (that someone knows) makes $40,000 a week.
My 8yo says (the baby capitalist) — but bosses are very busy all day and go to meetings and make decisions and work hard all day.
Mm. Is there any kind of work that’s worth $40K/week? It’s very hard to grasp. My imagination is very limited, I’m afraid. He’s probably earning that first $5k/week, but the $35K after that is just unearned fat.
So, there’s a class of people, afaik, who do get handed money for nothing, and it’s good to be them, I guess.
Yes. I’ve little idea of what it entails, of course, but there’s no unions forcing up wages at the top end of the scale. So it’s what the market will bear.
I coould be wrong, of course. It’s just possible that simply anyone could step into Harry Stonecipher’s (for example) vacant shoes and turn a profit for a mere couple of hundred thou.
Yes. I’ve little idea of what it entails, of course, but there’s no unions forcing up wages at the top end of the scale. So it’s what the market will bear.
Or, of course, the market for CEOs is distorted by forces other than unions: e.g. the fact that CEO compensation is generally set by a board with no strong interest in keeping costs down in that regard, but rather a status-driven interest in having a CEO with better-than-average compensation.
Can you get me a CEO job? I promise to donate half the salary to job training. Seriously.
Cool. Let me step forward to take the burden, then. I won’t give up half the salary, but I’ll sacrifice four times that much in stock options.
“So it’s what the market will bear.”
I chortle.
As long as boards are packed with gladhanders and toadies, the ‘market’ at the top of the executive hiring field is a joke. I bring you the quarter-billion dollar Golden Parachute.
The dirty secret of capitalism is that the wealthy hate capitalism. Absolutely despise it. Capitalism requires risk and competition. The wealthy hate both. And they are powerful enough to neuter it at will. Observe the bankruptcy bill. What we actually have is some kind of god-awful class-based communism.
“Can you get me a CEO job?”
No, and it has nothing to do with your skill set. You don’t know the right people. Have you read Execution?
My, my, Phil, but what a great lot of mind-reading that was. All utter crap, of course, but impressive in scope.
You mean there was actually a point to your puerile one-liner? By all means, share it with us.
Jane Galt, by the way, has as one of her pet topics the lack of a real market, the incredible distortions, and the misincentivization of CEO pay. Seb and Slarti may want to search her archives for it. Or not.
Sure, this is a flaw in public corporations. So why not hire me? I’ll take even more money to screw up a large corporation. Or less, depending on what it is they’re looking for. What the hell, there’s a LOT of wiggle room between my salary and the bottom end of CEO compensation.
Sure there was. You may even recognize it one day.
In the meantime, though, I invite you to read the Posting Rules, and comply.
I told you, you don’t know the right people. Accident of birth. Sorry about that.
Calling a comment puerile is a violation of the Posting Rules? Which rule, precisely, please? It’s reasonably civil, non-profane, non-disruptive, and not vilifying a poster for its own sake. Which one of those are you insinuating I’m in violation of?
Finally, if you actually think there’s a connection between “paying full-time workers a wage they can live on” and “giving people money for nothing,” I suggest that the person missing the point is you, and not me. Indeed, not paying people sufficient wages for working full time generally leads to disincentivizing full-time work in favor of welfare, which is exactly what we should be trying to avoid. But hey, if you’re in favor of more welfare . . . well, I can’t see squaring that with any sort of reasonably consistent conservativism, but whatever.
Civility, Phil. Puerile means immature, childish. Is it your position that this was a civil direction to steer the conversation? If so, allow me to disabuse you of that notion.
On the other hand, if you desired clarification, you had but to ask. I know, that’s a great deal more difficult than what you did do, but the standards here at OW are weigh on us all.
“are weigh”. Heh. Scratch “are”.
So, for the record, is calling a comment “puerile” more or less civil than calling a comment “utter crap”?
It is my position that the comment was puerile. I fail to see how that opinion, expressed as it was, is of itself uncivil. If there are synonyms you’d rather I use, I’m open to suggestion.
Also of note, I did ask you to share the point, which you declined to do, so apparently I do have to do more than ask. That I did not ask it in the way you’d prefer . . . well, it is what it is.
In search of common ground, I believe we can agree both are more civil than ‘your comment is a cheesy excretion from a diseased teat’, which I intend to use profligately.
Oh, I dunno. It could be utter crap because it a) made up a position from which I was purportedly arguing from, and b) proceeded to condemn it as being made of straw without actually showing that it’s straw.
But seeing that perhaps one can advance an argument that’s utter crap without actually being made of said crap, the same might be said of puerility. Again, though, a simple question or two might have averted all this.
Oh give me a f**king break. Unions are no more a distortion of the market than corporations are. The state has made a decision to insulate investors from risk, which is what allows companies to grow to a size such that an individual worker has no bargaining power. Therefore the state (in theory–the anti-union busting laws are actually ridiculously under-enforced) stops the corporations from firing workers who join unions.
It’s amazing the different standards there are between labor and capital. Unions are market distortions; corporations are people. (I am all for corporate personhood, our country wouldn’t be half as prosperous without it, but yeah, it’s a government intervention.) An even greater example: it’s fully expected that capital be able to migrate across borders, but as far as labor doing so…ha. There are security and economic reasons for that, obviously, but even so.
Hey, you can actually explain in what way paying full-time workers a reasonably comfortable wage is related to giving people money for nothing; or you can persist with the distraction. I cannot force you to do either.
One notes that, in contrast with LizardBreath’s fairly clear statement to which you responded originally, you didn’t bother to explicate your point there in the first place, instead asking a couple of provocative and almost certainly rhetorical questions. If that’s the way you prefer to argue, don’t be surprised when people don’t want to play Socratic Dialogues with you and instead attempt to extrapolate your meaning from the form of the questions.
Yes, I can: they’re not. However, if you’re willing to give people more money than the value received is worth, you are giving some money for nothing. If the guy who sweeps the floor in a union shop is making twice as much money as anyone doing the same in a non-union shop, I submit that you are in fact giving an entire wage for nothing at all.
It ought to be noted, too, that this is exactly the same argument, in effect, that Katherine and sidereal are making: the market is manipulated to pay someone an unnaturaly high wage.
I’d have responded quite a bit sooner if you hadn’t been such a tool about it. Quirky of me, I know.
“Jane Galt, by the way, has as one of her pet topics the lack of a real market, the incredible distortions, and the misincentivization of CEO pay. Seb and Slarti may want to search her archives for it. Or not.”
If you searched those posts for comments you might find my name there.
“Unions are market distortions; corporations are people.”
I’m perfectly happy to treat unions just like corporations. The main change would be not forcing people to join unions in order to work in particular places.
The link to the article I mentioned is here. I’d be curious to hear people’s reactions to it here, from both sides.
I’m perfectly happy to treat unions just like corporations. The main change would be not forcing people to join unions in order to work in particular places.
No to mention subjecting unions to anti-trust law.
I lean to the Andy Stern side in this dispute, but I understand the chicken-and-egg dilemma facing all unions and workers who would be unionists: Until a pro-labor administration takes office and is able to appoint judges and NLRB members and repair some of the rulings that have crippled the ability to organize and bargain, it’s going to be near impossible to organize enough workers to reverse the slide in union membership.
It’s a bet-the-farm move for the AFL-CIO.
And corporations are not persons, no matter what the Supreme Court ruled in Santa Clara (and even that’s dubious, though by now encrusted with subsequent rulings for which it was a precedent).
Are all jobs worth a couple of decent rooms and a bath for a typical work day?
YES!!!!!
if not, what’s the point? Might as well bring back slavery & make all the cheap labor conservatives happy.
I’m beginning to think that my “flag-burning is not speech” tirade the other day was not all for naught.
Way upthread Slarti asked it there was any justification for high pay for low skill work. Well, yes, there is. For one thing the individual receiving that pay could then go out and spend it on consumer goods, thereby contributing to a market that would support other jobs. Sec. Schultz, years ago, said of the Reagan Administratin, that their policy of impoverishing the American worker was in the long term disadvantageous to our economy because it would result in the loss of a domestic market for our goods.
A second reason is that the low skilled worker is your fellow citizen, a person who is willing to earn a check, and who wishes to live a responisble life. At a living wage the low skilled citizen is a lawabiding taxpayer. At a less-than living wage that person is a failure and likely to become a negative statistic: crime, drugs, dependency etc.
I teach high school special ed. My students have learning problems. They will not be able to get through college and many won’t succeed at community college. They are, however, good people, willing to work, willing to be responisble members of our society. Thirty of forty years ago they could have established themselves in the middle or lower middle class by getting a factory job somewhere. Now, because the high-pay, low scale union jobs are disappearing, they are heading for lives of working two or three lousy jobs to keep their noses above water.
We would be a healthier, more decent society if everyone who ws willing to work could get paid enough to maintain themselves at a reasonable level.
A snarky, but interesting thread (said the delicate commentator) I’d point out that it is possible to have societal agreement to accept higher prices to support more appropriate wages, just go West from SF for about 9 hours. However, that agreement can crumble if the differential is too great. I think this functions differently for different products. My wife says there is a price point where she will buy contacts mail order from the states or buy them domestically. Unfortunately, exchange rates being what they are, the contact industry here in Japan cannot control when that occurs. It’s hard to know where the balance lies (T. R. Reid’s _Confucius lives next door_ is interesting in that regard) However, some of that societal consensus is achieved by systamatically discriminating against working spouses. Interesting question as to how and when government should intervene.
I’ve never understood anti-unionism. I esp. don’t understand anti-unionism in an economy which is as anti-worker as is now the case.
Slarti doesn’t like the idea of paying living wages to low-skill workers; does he have an equal problem with executive compensation? I’d like to know why a guy getting paid, say, $20/hour to keep the workplace clean and safe is considered a bad thing but an executive who gets multi-million dollar bonuses every year no matter what is a good thing. What is the actual worth of a CEO’s skills? (Particularly in view of the Lay/Ebbets Defense, which boils down to “I had no idea what was going on in my company.”)
Why is mandatory union membership a bad thing, but right-to-work laws are good things?
Why are union political contributions bad things, but de facto corporate ownership of legislators a good thing?
Why are employer-paid health insurance and paid family leave menaces to capitalism, but employer-paid gym memberships, car leases, magazine subscriptions, and country club memberships boons to capitalism?
I encourage you to try.
You’re not trying very hard. Probably reading key passages from the thread might help.
Paying living wages to low-skill workers is a worthy goal — people here are talking about it as if it were something government could simply do. There are many obstacles to this.
For example, raising the minimum wage would help; but it would also cause some low-wage jobs to be merged or eliminated. I think parking-lot attendants are a good example; the owner can replace them with one of those ghastly blind-payment systems and outsource a daily inspection. In an attempt to guarantee good wages for low-value-added jobs, the next step is for governments to make it expensive to dismiss employees; this works for a little while and then backfires as employers become averse to hiring in response.
Or the cost of high-wage employees can force a company into an uncompetitive position with declining market share (General Motors), reducing its ability to pay anyone. Again, the next step is to bail out or nationalize such companies, which is perilously close to the alleged straw man above — instead of paying people for not working, you are paying them (with government money) to do a job that is not worth doing.
I don’t think anyone in this thread relishes the thought of unskilled people’s remaining poor. But there is a shortage of means for preventing it.
Sammler.
That’s an excellent point. However, there are some ideas that spring to mind that could move towards such a goal. The government could move to punish companies rather than illegal immigrants for use of illegal labor so companies are not rewarded. The tax system could be revised so that companies are not rewarded for outsourcing their work force. Stronger labor protection laws could be initiated to prevent the most egregious outsourcing (you know, where you have to train your substitute in the month you get notice) This might be too difficult to do in the states, but here in Japan, one spouses salary is taxed at a certain rate while the second spouse is taxed at a much higher rate after a set amount (currently 1,030,000 yen, or about $10,000 dollars a year)
I agree that it is a difficult problem, and in some ways, it is a moral problem, and moral suasion is needed rather than government intervention. And it will certainly require some out of the box thinking.
Or the cost of high-wage employees can force a company into an uncompetitive position with declining market share (General Motors), reducing its ability to pay anyone.
The reason GM/Ford/Chrysler keep losing Market Share is poor product lines, Crappy Products and a general perception by the buying public that German ,Japanese & Korean cars are a better deal. German & Japanese Labor is probably more expansive than American Labor yet the German/Japanese Auto Manufacturers are profitable despite selling their product in a competitive market place..
Awsome post Sidereal-
“So it’s what the market will bear.”
I chortle.
As long as boards are packed with gladhanders and toadies, the ‘market’ at the top of the executive hiring field is a joke. I bring you the quarter-billion dollar Golden Parachute.
The dirty secret of capitalism is that the wealthy hate capitalism. Absolutely despise it. Capitalism requires risk and competition. The wealthy hate both. And they are powerful enough to neuter it at will. Observe the bankruptcy bill. What we actually have is some kind of god-awful class-based communism.
Posted by: sidereal | March 8, 2005 02:18 PM
Yup
We already know that is true because of the prevelance of the too big to fail meme on wall street.
No Phil you are missing the point when you say
” Indeed, not paying people sufficient wages for working full time generally leads to disincentivizing full-time work in favor of welfare, which is exactly what we should be trying to avoid. But hey, if you’re in favor of more welfare . . . well, I can’t see squaring that with any sort of reasonably consistent conservativism, but whatever.”
The conservatives want to do away with welfare as well. The idea is that the poor are supposed to die, preferably quietly, but in prison will do in a pinch.
If I suspected you actually believed that, Frank, I’d feel sorry for you.
“If we’re going to start paying people what they’re actually worth, let’s start at the top. Executive salary-to-non executive salary ratios are 400:1.
Someone with a better sense of economics than I can surely explain what it is that executives do that’s worth 400x what support staff does.
Let’s hear it.”
CaseyL- Actually there has been a lot of economic work done to try to justify CEO pay. I’m going to try to sum up a 200 level class in a couple of paragraphs. Its been awhile since I took the class and I don’t feel like trying to locate the textbook.
1 The tournament model: By paying CEOs an outrageous amount everyone hoping to reach such a position within the organization attempts to stand out. Becoming CEO is a “prize” in a tournament involving all the members of the organization who hope someday to get that job.
2 The star vs. slug model: Because these jobs can potentially effect the earnings of a company by a large amount (i.e. millions or even 10s of millions) getting the best possible candidate is hugely important, and therefore even if having a huge salary only has a marginal effect in terms of improving the candidate pool it may be worth it.
Even after the course with a professor I liked and respected (I got an A) looking at the numbers I thought they were out of hand, and this was about 7 years ago when executive comp was only about 300x normal pay.
I have a basic understanding of market forces. I understand that the decline of living wage jobs in this country isn’t all the fault of Republicans. There are global market forces at play, for example, that impact the type of jobs here and the type of training necessary for those jobs.
However, there is a negative force at work in this country, and it is the religion of free trade capitalism. The god, of course,is material wealth. Market forces are worshipped as god’s will, and must be seen as positive and allowed to operate without “interference”. The value system of this religion is self-interest, ie selfishness, although the adherents don’t call it that. They speak of the ownership society, independence, or freedom. They are Social Darwinists. They don’t believe in the common good because they don’t see away to use it to shunt money their way. Like all religions, there is a difference between what is said and actions taken. The adherents of this religion regard any efforts to limit their selfishness as interference in the divine market forces, but they are perfectly willing to interfere for their own benefit.
Like all relgions, it is faith-based. The fact that all democracies demand limitations, resttrictions, and mitigations on capitalism in order to maintain a decent standard of living for the citizens doesn’t phase them a bit; they continue to claim that their religion is fundamentally linked to democracy when, in fact, it is fundamentally opposed to it. (think of Pinochet and the Chile experiment)
By the way, I’m not a socialist, communist, or any other kind of ist, except possibly a realist. Market forces exist. But they aren’t there to be worshipped. We are citizens in a democracy and we can take action to mitigate, limit, or steer market forces to our mutual advantage. It isn’t a sin to “interfere”.
The conservatives want to do away with welfare as well. The idea is that the poor are supposed to die, preferably quietly, but in prison will do in a pinch.
Usually wars are better!!! They get the honor of Dying or Being Physically/Spychologicaly wounded for the greater good of the Wealthy.
Lily- I think you are mistaken in blaming the market. You are right to think that your enemies use free market ideology to cloak their efforts to crush the middle classes, but their methods are actually antithetical to the free market. The rich have figured out how to take bigger and bigger pieces of the pie, but its not because they are winning in a free market. Its because they use the law to keep changing the rules, more and more in their favor.
Its not even controvesial to point out that returns to capital have been going up and returns to labor going down for the last 30 years.