When people think of unions, they think of salaries and benefits. And indeed, unions do improve wages for union and non-union employees alike. But have you ever wondered why a lot of companies are willing to match union pay in order to stay non-unionized? If the company is going to pay the same, why not just allow the union? It is because unions are most important in their ability to stop employers from abusing workers.

Age Discrimination—at 35!

I remember back in 1999—when I was 35 years old—I was applying for a job with a high tech company. They made a very big deal about my age. They were concerned that I wouldn’t “fit in” with their group. But they really wanted me because I was such a high tech badass. Eventually, they hired me and I went to work in a group of 13 people. Out of this group, almost all of the work was done by one other guy and me. The other guy was, of course, “old” like me.

Both parts of this story are typical. First, high tech companies do not want to hire older workers. Most of the time they are not so up front about it. And most of the time it isn’t because they are worried about group cohesion; they are worried about salary. Second, there is often a huge gulf between the knowledge and skills of the old and young workers.

I find this all particularly interesting in light of the conservative obsession with raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare. It is certainly true that most white collar workers could easily work until they are 70. The problem is that there is a big difference between biological and cultural norms. A computer programmer could work past 65 and might even want to; but most corporations don’t want to employ such a programmer. Of course, most companies don’t wait that long. Usually, white collar workers get the ax in their 50s.

RadioShack and the Globalization Lie

Al Lewis at the Wall Street Journal wrote a column about a typical case, Getting Sacked at RadioShack. It tells the story of David Nelson, a guy who started at RadioShack in 1979. He worked his way up through the company, becoming district manager and supervising 51 stores. In 2008, when Nelson turned 55, a new regional manager came in. After the first month, he gave Nelson a negative performance review—the first Nelson had ever received. After the second month, he gave Nelson another bad review and fired him. Nelson managed to get the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to represent him in court. Last month, the court found against RadioShack and made them pay Nelson $187,000 in back pay. Of course, that means Nelson had to wait 4 years for this justice. I’m sure he has lost far more than he’s gained. But it is a much happier story than that of most people who are illegally fired.

Lewis ends his article with something of an apology for RadioShack—talking about how poorly the company is doing. I don’t see how this belongs in the article. What’s more, all of my tech friends and I were horrified years ago when RadioShack switched to being mostly a phone reseller. It was clear at the time that the company was trying to cash in on a short term opportunity at the expense its long term health. But this is what you get when companies are managed on a quarterly time scale.

I think the point of noting RadioShack’s bad situation is a way of saying, “Globalization is hurting everyone; workers just have to get used to it.” Note that Canada has basically the same level of unionization as it did 50 years ago; unionization in the United States has plummeted; no one has ever explained why the US would suffer more from globalization than Canada. What’s more, corporate profits are way up. The management of places like RadioShack don’t fire people like Nelson because they have to in order to survive. In fact, Nelson’s position wasn’t going away. They were just getting rid of him because they could replace him with someone younger and cheaper.

Unions Protect Us

All these stories highlight the one systemic problem facing the middle class here in the United States: unions are dying. There are only two ways to protect workers’ rights. The first is for the government to intervene aggressively in the work place. That is not going to happen. The other is to strengthen the ability of workers to organize. Over the last 60 years, we have made it much harder for unions to organize (both through legislation changes and lack of enforcement). If there is any way forward it is through stronger unions. Note that conservatives are almost all against unions when they should be for them.

Unfortunately, unions are running scarred. Union members are just trying to hang on to the little they still have. Non-unionized workers tend to resent unions—often thinking that no one should be unionized rather than that everyone should be. And this resentment is something the right has been very good at promoting. Now the main coverage of unions in the media is about how public sector union pensions are killing us. (Funny that when Wall Street was handing out big bonuses to the people who caused the crash of 2008, we were lectured on contracts and how we had to fulfill our obligations. But when it is ordination workers’ pensions, contracts don’t matter that much.)

David Nelson is an object lesson for all of us. In most circumstances, a company would not screw up. In most circumstances, they would have fired Nelson in a way that would not have allowed him to sue. And regardless, the whole of the Republican Party is against even having the right to seek legal redress, as we saw with Lilly Ledbetter. This is not a war we can each fight alone. The situation is dire. We must organize so that we will have the right to organize.

Noam Scheiber at The New Republic has a really good review of Bob Woodward’s new book, The Backscratcher—Bob Woodward’s Anti-Obama Bias. More than just a review of The Price of Politics, it is a good refresher on the debt ceiling debacle, which has made me rethink my harsh criticism of Obama. But mostly, the article is about Bob Woodward’s bias against President Obama.

Scheiber puts forward two aspects of Woodward that make the bias contradictory. First, Woodward is a typical elite boot-licker who “reflexively flatters the powerful.” There is no doubt about that! But Scheiber claims that Woodward is against the current most powerful man in the world because of a particular attitude of Woodward’s class:

There is little doubt of this, but I have a different take that compliments it: Wordward follows public opinion.

This is base upon the “Bush at War” triology. The first, Bush at War made Bush out to be a great leader—Dwight Eisenhower or even George Washington. The next, Plan of Attack was slightly critical, but still mostly adulatory. And the third, State of Denial was quite critical. This just happens to have been the way that America felt about Bush.

I haven’t read much of Woodward’s books since All the President’s Men. What I have read—even his non-political writing such as the insipid Wired—has been standard, middlebrow fair. So of course what we get on the second half of Obama’s term is the typical upper middle class complaints that Obama is just sorta missing something; we don’t know quite what it is; but we’re sure it isn’t that he’s black. (Not that Woodward would ever go anywhere near the race question.)

I’ve long wondered about the comparisons that people naturally make between Woodward and Carl Bernstein. These arguments usually go something like, “Isn’t it amazing that Bernstein hasn’t had much of a career but Woodward has become a titan of political reporting.” I don’t accept this. It’s true that Woodward has this position. But it is because he panders to a particular class of Washington insider. He is the towering figure he is because he does not threatened the elite. Bernstein has had a respectable career with some minor successes that did ruffle feathers. Woodward is only willing to ruffle the feathers of dead birds like William Casey.

And so, it is not surprising that Woodward would go after Obama. And what will happen if Obama wins reelection and the economy recovers? Woodward will write a hagiography of Obama.

Everybody—in the sense of “economic geeks”—is buzzing about the IMF World Economic Outlook report (PDF). In it, they explain that they’ve been underestimating the economic multiplier effect.

Don’t click away! Really: this is interesting, and simple, and important. I promise you! Just give me one paragraph to explain.

Let’s suppose that the government decides to spend $100 million on starting a new program. This money will be paid out in salaries (it doesn’t matter and this makes it simpler). Let’s assume that 80% of this money earned is spent. Thus, just at this second level, $100 million spent results in $180 million dollars in economic activity. Of course, this continues on for an endless number of levels because that $80 million will be earned by others who will spend it and so on. This is the economic multiplier effect.

There are two aspects of underestimating the economic multiplier. First, it means that the positive effects of government spending are underestimated. Second, it means that the negative effects of government cuts are also underestimated.

So by noting that they’ve been underestimating the economic multiplier, the IMF is doing a Rick Perry, “Oops!” Traditionally the IMF has pushed countries to take on governmental austerity. This is what Paul Krugman refers to as belief in the Confidence Fairy. But over the last decade, the IMF has started to push the idea that maybe the Confidence Fairy doesn’t exist and that austerity is not the panacea that had been claimed.

This is an important reason why all of the austerity in Europe has been such a bust and why the United States (with much less austerity) is doing better. Unfortunately, the European Central Bank (and the whole of the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well) hang on to the idea that it is only through austerity that we will flourish. This is the idea that is behind Romney’s statements that governments don’t create jobs and Ryan’s assertion that the stimulus is just a temporary “sugar high.”

It is good that the IMF is now on the right side of the facts and pushing for more expensive fiscal and monetary policy. Of course, it won’t really help. If facts mattered to the austerians, they would not—after 4 years of failed policy—continue to be austerians.

I’m going out of town on business for a few days. I don’t know how much blogging I will be doing. Maybe a lot. We’ll see. Regardless, I created this set of ten R&B songs from my childhood. When all the polls are going against you, you can always turn to this:

Update (8 October 2012 9:39 pm)

When Etta James died, I saw a lot of headlines that read, “At Last Singer Etta James Dead at 73.” Yes, they normally put quotes around “At Last” and a comma after “James.” But still, it is an annoying headline. Better would be, “Etta James, ‘At Last’ Singer, Dead at 73.” Unless you were really anxious for the old girl to die.

Fred Kaplan has a devastating article about Romney’s foreign policy speech today, Mitt Romney’s Most Dishonest Speech. You can get some idea of where he’s coming from in the subtitle, “When it comes to lies and half-truths, Romney saves his best stuff for foreign policy.”

Kaplan goes point by point in the speech and demolishes it. He admits that in a couple of cases—especially Syria—Obama’s performance could have been better. But as usual, Romney does not say what he would do better. It is the same old same old from Romney: “Trust me!”

Earlier today, I wrote about my frustration at having to defend Obama when I disagree with his policies. Kaplan discusses this in his article as well. You can’t not. No president is perfect; he will always do things that one disagrees with. But it seems particularly wrong that a liberal like me should have to defend Obama policies that Romney (if he weren’t running against Obama) would love.

Here is one example from Kaplan:

Of course, all of this is standard Republican macho foreign policy bullshit. But according to Romney, Obama should get no credit for it. No credit? Giving him credit for the drone strikes is key to my biggest disappointments about him.

The article next goes on to a very frustrating attack that Romney does all the time and almost never gets called on:

This is not likely to catch the eye of PolitiFact. You see, Romney is telling the truth: he will do these things. This is the same as his claim to cover pre-existing condition without explaining that his plan is to have things exactly the same as they’ve been for years.

The rest of the article chronicles all of the now well known ways that Romney deceives—this time on foreign policy. Will it matter? Probably not. After all, he was “aggressive” at the debate! If we end up with this fucktard as President, it will be thanks to the fact that we don’t have more journalists like Fred Kaplan who are willing to dig into what the candidates actually say and not focus on how they say it.

We have allowed the powerful, the rich, the Democratic and Republican Cheech-and-Chong machine… to define the political context through which we view the world… We need to remove 9/11 from our memories for a moment, and look at a perfect trajectory of mass slaughter in Iraq that extends back many decades, and extends to both the Democratic and Republican regimes that have ruled this country. —Jeremy Scahill, Socialist Worker, 2007

Matt Taibbi has an interesting take on the debate. He thinks that both Obama and Romney lost. But I suspect that he sees it pretty much the way everyone else does, because he spends most of the article attacking what Romney actually said.

The main point of the article is that the media should not elevate style over substance. They already know that they work in a medium that distorts politics in a very bad way. But instead of pushing back against this, they just pile on more.

Taibbi discusses this as it related to the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates:

Indeed, they should be ashamed. But they aren’t. This reminds me of when Bill O’Reilly is on The Daily Show claiming that he’s just an entertainer. I’m inclined to believe him. But it isn’t just him. It is most TV news people. Hell, it is most newspaper people.

Taibbi ends:

Of course they did. You know why? Because there’s no business like their business:

[1] I’ve always wondered about this. Isn’t it likely that the in 1960, the radio-listening public skewed conservative? I don’t know, but it’s a reasonable question.

This is how the presidential race works. We start with a policy of Obama’s that I don’t like. Then Mitt Romney, who very much likes the policy, lies and says the policy doesn’t exist. And then Obama defends doing something that I don’t like. Meanwhile, of course, the media are at the point where Mitt Romney’s lies are just given, and therefore: dog bites man—nothing to see here—no news.

Anyway, Obama lied too when he said Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion in the next ten years; he should have noted that Romney is going to pay for those cuts by… Magic! It is a given in the mainstream that Democrats are supposed to give a thorough analysis of their opponents’ policy plans while Republicans are expected to lie. Balance!

The Maddow Blog is reporting on Mitt’s Mendacity on trade agreements. According to Mitt Romney, Obama has not passed any new free trade agreements. In fact, he’s passed 3, but who cares? If Mitt Romney were a Democrat, well then, he would be expected to get that number right. In fact, if he had said 2 or 4, major portions of the fact checking industry would have been mobilized to bring this shocking lie to the attention of the public. But Romney isn’t a Democrat; he’s a Republican. Dog bites man; nothing to see here; no news.

Of course, free trade agreements are bullshit. They are designed to fuck workers and destroy the environment—all in the name of greater profits for corporations. Here’s the thing about these things. They are always justified by noting that they’ve increased productivity or GDP. But how long are we going to accept these reasons when over the last 3 decades huge increases in productivity and GDP have provided works with almost no gains whatsoever? But as every newspaper in the nation can tell you: labor reporting just isn’t interesting. No news there.

So here I am in the position of defending a repugnant policy of Obama against an outright lie from Mitt Romney. This is what comes from supporting a candidate and a party that really doesn’t have my interests at heart. It’s like choosing a mother who beats me over a father who rapes me. And yet, I don’t want to see America raped by Mitt Romney and the Republican party. So I support the very conservative Democratic Party. But how long can America deal with this situation? And how long can I?

Dog bites man; nothing to see here; no news.

Mister Kenneth W. Krause, ambushed while heading to his car after a solid 3 hours at the gym, gallantly apologized to Jennifer Livingston for indelicately addressing her weight condition; he had no idea she was so damn sensitive.

I would like to apologize to Mister Krause for insinuating he may have, at one time, looked like a retarded Chinese Crested dog. He just looks like some guy.

I guess her wish was what told the doctors she needed a new heart: