My wife's family is full of right wingers (conservatives they call themselves, but they are not). When she links something on her Facebook page they imagine is in the least liberal, they start posting their usual to the right of the John Birch Society crap. I do my best to avoid even looking at this stuff, but today they charged her with being "envious" (and ignorant of history) because she defended unions and the Democrats in Wisconsin. THAT was just too much. I actually have a Ph.D. in history, so this guff and the personal charge against my wife was something I found truly offensive. So I wrote back to her to send on to her cousins the following:
What her cousin said:
As history shows us, they typically chose to spend the dues money to elect liberal politicians, who enact socialist legislation. When the states enact "right to work" legislation, the union leadership will finally be held accountable and we will start to see more responsible spending activity on the part of the unions.
Your cousin has not kept up with history, nor has he any idea what the real effect of "right to work" has been on worker's income, health, workweeks, etc. Unions cannot, by law, spend dues on political lobbying. They may ask for donations from members to support political action, just like corporations do (union PACS just like corporate PACS, even universities have PACS). Unions endorse candidates, Republican and Democratic, as, in fact, several unions did of the Wisconsin Republican governor. Those have now withdrawn their endorsements because he lied about his intended policies. He promised to focus on job creation and promised 250,000 jobs in the next 4 years; instead he is destroying jobs by the thousands.
The right to form a union is an effectuation of the right to freely associate and petition for redress of grievances--and other rights asserted both in the US constitution and international human rights covenants. Unions can and do operate democratically to protect the freedoms of the majority from the tyranny of the few who use their inherited wealth or ill-gotten wealth (such as the banksters and other financial fraudsters) to gain control over our political system. He should read the transcript of Walker's comments to someone he thought was David Koch. Quite revealing of who is really a tyrant and corrupt.
Koch transcript
If unions caused so many economic problems in the US, how is it that Sweden, Germany, France and most other EU countries with much higher union membership are doing much better than the US? They live longer, are happier, enjoy much better healthcare and quality of food, infant mortality is lower, and on and on. If you doubt this, just look up:
Detailed EU/US comparison
This is a comprehensive comparison to 2005. While the US to 2005 had lower unemployment, that is now not the case. Also while the US had higher productivity and per capita output, distribution of that wealth has decidedly skewed toward the top 2 percent of incomes. The gini index shows clearly that the US has very much become a nation of fewer and fewer haves and many more have nots.
Tell your cousin I would be happy if we went back to tax rates under Ronald Reagan; it would at least be a considerable increase in taxes on the wealthy few who currently escape taxes almost altogether. (This family worships the ground Reagan walked on, and are quite unaware that he was a member of a union at one time before he turned traitor.) This redistribution of wealth to the top has had, and is increasingly having, a negative impact on Americans compared to other countries:
A good summary of unions in the US and elsewhere is here:
short union history
Roughly about 7 percent of the US workforce is now unionized, the lowest since before the Great Depression. We also have the most wealth concentration at the top since 1929. I don’t think either of these facts is accidentally related to the current economic crisis. In the specific case of Wisconsin, there was no budget crisis until the Republican governor created one by giving his cronies tax breaks. And further, the unions have given him every concession in wages and benefits he asked for. Now he just wants to deprive them of the right to bargain and unionize while he sells off state assets without bid or explanation.
Wisconsin events diary
Our concern for these trends in the US and the events is Wisconsin is certainly NOT a matter of envy. We do not have to return to the US; we choose to when we retire, mainly because we want to fight for what we know is right back on American soil and we will be able to afford to do so by that time.
It is a shame to the US and a matter of anger to us that we had to go abroad to earn a decent living and pursue the American Dream. We know for a fact that many Americans are suffering unnecessarily due to the greed of the few. Greed of the few leads directly to the tyranny your cousin so fears.
This is decidedly not the land of liberty and freedom that it once was and your cousin speaks so often about. The US has the world’s highest rate of imprisonment per 100,000 persons and that in the US, many of our freedoms would be less than they are here in “communist” China. We have no fear of gun violence here. No fear right wing thugs will smash our car windows or scratch the paint because of what we post on the bumpers. No worry that what we post will trigger hate mail or worse, stalking. And I am not silent here, appearing often on radio and in print or in public events. I do not fear here that someone like Beck or Limbaugh will advocate I be killed for being what they call a liberal, unlike what they do every day in the US. We know that the US could do better, and that in many countries, people are better off now than in the US. And that makes us angry, not envious.