US Politics Mega-thread

On July 25 2026 18:30 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:

On July 25 2026 03:35 Introvert wrote:

On July 24 2026 16:34 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:

On July 24 2026 13:24 Introvert wrote:

On July 24 2026 13:14 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:

On July 24 2026 09:21 Introvert wrote:

Laws governing unions can be better or worse. In particular I have a problem with public sector unions that negotiate with the politicians against the tax payers. You will never, ever find a union that says their members don't need more money, benefits, earlier retirement, etc. Like so many things, my particular focus on this comes from watching what has happened in California. I appreciate the cops and firefighters but retiring in your 50s for something like 90% of your final salary + benefits is insane, espeically when the system wasn't well structured in the first place. And guess what? This year because CALPERs got a bigger return than they anticipated (thanks AI boom!), all of a sudden the unions are back even though the program is still in the hole long term. Teacher's unions also demand more when the system is broke, it's coming to a head in LA right now. They are the biggest interest groups in the entire state. Private sector unions have had their place, they were born out of terrible circumstances we would never tolerate today. But they have no sense of civic virtue, either. Seemingly both public and private have this problem.

That is correct, you probably won't find many if any unions that says their members don't need more money, benefits, early retirement etc. Because that's the job of a union: to leverage collective power of workers to further the material interests of the workers. If a union is doing otherwise, then something has gone horribly wrong.

The understanding is that the system is designed to be adversarial, and that employers will naturally advocate for their own financial interests and is in a position of greater power/leverage than any individual worker. Unions are the weight on the other end of the scale to directly advocate for worker's interests OVER the employer's.

This is fundamentally the same system as the courts. Your lawyer is supposed to argue your case even if they know you are in the wrong, if your lawyer is arguing against your interests then something has gone horribly wrong (and is also malpractice).

Civic virtue is irrelevant; that's not the union's place to worry about the employer's interest (outside of calculating what they can get away with demanding), even if that employer is the government/taxpayer. In exceptional circumstances, unions will work with employers through hardship (as I believe had happened in Germany during economic downturns), however this is done in the interests of the employees, eg because it was in the worker's interests for these organisations not to go bankrupt/close down.

If employers are not using their own leverage properly to advocate for their interests, that's on them. The fundamental power of the union is still that all the workers in the union can go on strike/quit, the employer's leverage is they can hire other people. It's hardly the union's fault that they are doing their job correctly.

I also don't think many people are going to seriously argue that teachers are overpaid. They are not the reason that the education systems they work in are broke. It doesn't stop being the teacher union's job to advocate for the material interests of the teachers just because the education system is underfunded/poorly organised.

The solution to the teacher union demanding more when their system is broke, is not to demand less. It's that the system should be not broke.

Yes, I am aware of the theory behind unions. What you described is mostly applicable to private sector unions, which as I said, can be organized under bad laws and good laws. Public sector unions negotiate most often against the people they help elect, at least here in CA. Or in Chicago where was mayor was a member of the teacher's union. And in LA, the system is broke partially because there are not nearly as many students, partially because they do pay so much in retirement and benefits, and also because of mismanagement. Despite this, the workers used their bargaining power to get the district to spend money it does not have. Now, the county is threatening to take over. As I said, there is no sense of virtue, humility, or propriety among them.

The fundamental power, again, of the unions, are that the workers can go on strike/quit. If the union were working against the workers' interests then the workers themselves don't have to actually go on strike, whatever the unions decide would immediately have no legs. My understanding is that teachers in parts of California that did strike, overwhelmingly voted to do so, the union is merely the organisational body through which they have done this.

I don't know how well Californian teachers are paid, maybe they are being unrealistic, I don't know. Though my understanding throughout the US is that teachers are generally a poorly paid profession for it's occupational requirements of expertise/work. I would guess that Californian teachers are actually also a poorly paid profession compared to other professionals in their area (I understand pay and cost of living is higher in California), but if they are indeed overpaid, I haven't the prerequisite familiarity to disagree. But your problem seems to stem from the workers themselves making unrealistic demands than anything else.

Given that the actual workers in question appear overwhelmingly in favour of these strikes (97.6% authorization vote for the San Francisco walkout according to google search), I don't see how it could be the union's fault that the teacher's are demanding more pay. Maybe the teachers have unrealistic demands, the union is just doing it's job.

On July 24 2026 09:21 Introvert wrote:
The logic of "well it's their job to ~~maximize shareholder value~~ 'further the material interests of the workers'" is not something that many on the left would consider an acceptable answer in any other context. If the unions are a detriment to the citizens who pay their salaries then they need to be contained. I see no reason to think that we should be less skeptical of a union, espeically a government one, than a corporation.

Depends on which leftists you speak to, they are not a monolith.

I would consider myself vaguely leftist (for where I am anyway, in the context of the US I'd be pretty far left). I am being exactly as skeptical of unions as I am of corporations. In that I don't have a problem with the existence or purpose of either unions or corporations. They aren't really that different. Both exist to serve the material interests of its 'shareholders'.

I'm not against the existence of corporations, that economic power that it leverages exists whether or not corporations exist. "maximize shareholder value" is neither good nor bad, it's just a description of how the corporation would likely act. While I don't like with how profit gets distributed between 'ownership' and 'work'. I don't think corporations are the problem. It's an organisation leveraging a underlying power dynamic that already exists.

Likewise with unions, "further material interests of workers" is neither good nor bad, it's pretty much just a description of what a union does. I am likewise not against unions, because it is leveraging an underlying power that already exists.

While in the context of our societies, I would like for profits to be more distributed to 'work' over 'ownership', which generally conforms more with what unions do than corporations, this doesn't make unions fundamentally better than corporations in my mind. "Further the material interests of/maximise shareholder value" aren't really propositions you need to be agreeing or disagreeing with, they are just descriptions of what these organisations will do.

Some do these badly, like unions who over-ask and all it's members lose their jobs, or corporations who end up losing their owners money. Some are corrupt, embezzlement by the leadership in both cases can exist. But fundamentally they are just expressions of an underlying leverage that already exists.

Sometimes the material interest of these shareholders run contrary to 'the public good'. But I don't think these are really arguments against the organisations existing, these seem to be more of an issue of people pursuing their personal material interests over whatever the public good happens to be, which is always a difficult line to draw.

It seems like you have more issue with particular people (yes, as a collective) pursuing their own personal interests above the public good, rather than the actual mechanism through which that collective power is expressed, eg a union, or a corporation, or a voting block.

In this case, being against even public sector unions because public servants can ask for too much is like being against defense lawyers because rich criminals can hire really good defense lawyers to get away with crime. It sucks that they have this power, but it's not the lawyer's fault.

To say you are against unions for public servants because a teacher union with overwhelming support is asking for (maybe unrealistic) higher pay, is saying you are against public school teachers having the ability to organize their collective leverage. It's a strange choice over just, maybe those teachers shouldn't be asking for more pay.

Going back to:

I see no reason to think that we should be less skeptical of a union, espeically a government one, than a corporation.

Are you also against corporations? In fact, lets narrow it down, are you against any corporations that receive government contracts? If not, then you are in fact more skeptical of unions than corporations.

You are right that I have been very generous in assigning most of the problems to the unions and not mentioning the rank-and-file.

The issue with all those words you used is that they barely apply to public sector unions. There are no price signals or a mutual understanding that an imbalanced deal ends up with no company and no jobs. There will always be teachers and I don't see a great movement to stop using taxpayer money for schools. LAUSD has hundreds of thousands fewer students than a decade ago but the payroll has expanded in that time. They demanded more of a school district that has finances that are public so everyone can see they don't have the money.

Sorry, if the incentives for a teachers union are not mitigated by external factors then I require them to act in a prudent manner of their own accord.
Moreover, much of that doesn't really address the problem. Union laws are not set in stone. If they are working contrary to the good of the district they serve then we change it. If we go back to your first bit, the "teachers used their power and voted for it so what does the union have to do with it" sounds like an excellent reason to abolish the union.

Your talk of being "descriptive" is just besides the point unless you think there is nothing that can be done.

My point of being descriptive is the whole point. You can't argue for the abolishment of a union, unless you actually advocate for laws against the establishment of that union to begin with. If you just abolish a union, then the workers will just form it again. The workers still have the power to mass strike/quit, they still, I assume, want more material benefits, the union is just organisation through which they... organise.

If you abolish an organisation, but the underlying interests and power dynamics remain the same, then the same organisation will just form again under a different name. Because the role of what the union does is just that: descriptive. The constituent workers still want the same things, and still have the same leverage, individually and collectively.

Any practical abolishment of public sector unions means actual laws against the formation of public sector unions to begin with. Unions don't actually have any legal powers to begin with (all their legal 'powers' are protections against union busting, eg it's illegal to stop them forming and illegal to stop workers accessing them).

So in essence you are arguing against the rights of public servants to engage in collective bargaining.

While I understand public services are more problematic to just 'shut down' or 'hire entirely new workforce' for, therefore giving the threat of strike/quitting more teeth than in the private sector. This seems more of a difficult problem that requires more taxpayer(eg voter/resident) involvement in the bargaining process than something that should be resolved by banning public servants from collective bargaining.

Keep in mind, the employer to public servants is the tax payer. It's natural for them to be included in the bargaining process given they are paying these employees. Including into the fact, that the public servants themselves benefit from public services, this seems like the 'employers' have much more leverage than you are making them out to have.

It seems to me that you are taking the burden of that bargaining off the 'employers', which would be a vector of natural resistance against the interests of the workers, and instead advocating essentially laws banning some workers from collectivizing, which is very extreme.

Again, I understand it's hard to get the voting public to do anything competently together, so from a practical standpoint I can see why this would seem like a no go. But in essence you are arguing for the disenfranchisement of a section of the workforce, by legally stripping away their rights to use leverage that they already possess.

I understand being against the interests of the teachers union, in essence all the taxpayers who are paying those teachers are materially in the same boat. But I don't you realize how extreme of a solution disbanding a union (in a way that makes a material difference) actually is.

Hmm perhaps I am misunderstanding you?

You seem to be turning a problem we can actually see into an abstract problem for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. Public employee unions have only existed for a few decades, public employees have existed far longer. We can manage without them or yes, as I said, we can pass laws that severely restrict what they can do, if abolishing them is not politically feasible. It's just another specific benefit diffuse costs problems, part of what makes a union what it is ia the ability to organize and mobilize. Far easier to convince the taxpayers to add another 0.25% of tax on something. I am not taking the burden off the taxpayer, it is on them to vote for representatives who will tackle the problem. But in the meantime I'm not going to dust off my hands and say "well it's just a union being a union." I am in fact advocating for some of the things you mentioned.

But maybe you have point in a different way. Maybe it's far easier to contain the problem if we don't abolish the but hamper it's ability to do anything.

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