I assume your comment is that Amazon would lose money if a union happened?
UK and France are ~1/3 lower. Italy and Spain are ~50% lower.
1: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita
I think unions do good, but they can also be an enemy of progress. Here is a piece about unions that I found on google.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/unneces...
(USGDPPC - EU28GDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EU28GDPPC) = 0.338
So the comment you're replying to was correct, for at least one plausible definition of "1/3 lower than the US".
As for the countries you mentioned:
Monaco: < 1 square mile, not reproducible in a larger country
Norway: Giant oil reserves / tiny population, not reproducible without that
Switzerland: Valid
Ireland: GDP numbers shouldn't be taken at face value because tax laws[2] encourage corporations to attribute EU-wide revenues to Ireland. Reported GDP per capita is 135% of the US value, but 2016 median household income[3] was only 87% of the US value[4]. This cuts both ways, though - other EU countries should have their estimates nudged upwards.
Iceland: 92% of US GDP per capita[1]
Denmark: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Sweden: 86% of US GDP per capita[1]
Austria: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Finland: 79% of US GDP per capita[1]
UK: 75% of US GDP per capita[1]
France: 74% of US GDP per capita[1]
Italy: 68% of US GDP per capita[1]
Spain: 65% of US GDP per capita[1]
EU (all 28 countries): 71% of US GDP per capita[1]
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gpii/geog...
[4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
(USGDPPC - EurozoneGDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EurozoneGDPPC) = 0.283
Roughly speaking, you could write this as "The GDP per capita of the Eurozone is 28.3% lower than the US".
All jokes aside, I'd make that trade any day for the relevant social safety nets.
--Higher GDP European state--
Switzerland pop: 8.5m gdp/capita: 65k -- reputation as a tax haven
Ireland pop: 6.5m gdp/capita: 69k -- reputation as a tax haven
Norway pop: 5.3m gdp/capita: 85k -- petrostate
Iceland pop: 364,260 gpd/capita: 54,753
Monaco pop: 37,497 gdp/capita: 162k -- french riviera
--Most populous Western Europe nations--
Germany pop: 82m gdp/capita: 44k
France pop: 67m gdp/capita: 38k
UK pop: 66m gdp/capita: 39k
Italy pop: 60m gdp/capita: 32k
Look I'm all for a larger welfare state, and there are plenty of things our nation could learn from Europe. But to pretend that if we made our country more European our economy would grow to resemble a tiny nation/tax haven like Ireland more than the UK, France, or Germany is unrealistic.
It very much depends on the legal framework that organized workers and organized employers interact in.
I have had situations where it was not allowed to move a computer monitor from one cube to another - that had to be done by a union employee. Literally taking a unused spare monitor from one desk, and putting it on another employees desk where it was need. ...and there was a formal requisition process to get that done which took two weeks to get through approvals, assignment, and finally have it done.
I have had union workers walk off the job during a major system outage because their facility managers forced them to take their break time. The whole company was down - it was all-hands-on-deck outage due to Hurricane Sandy. The actual union workers wanted to help us get the systems back online for the company, but the union rep wouldn't let them work.
I have had great workers quit or refuse jobs with our company because they knew and loathed the union - not the company, but the UNION.
I don't have any problem with unions at companies that protect the SAFETY of workers, as they are needed in various industrial jobs. ...but at a TECH companies where workers are making six figures, have matched 401k plans, and safe and comfortable desk jobs? ...it just screams "ridiculous" to me.
There's no single apples-to-apples measurement we can make; the US has more natural resources than the EU, suffered far less harm from all the major conflicts up through WW2, &c.
I don't know whether or not liberalizing the economy of the EU would raise per-capita GDP or not, but the post I was replying to was claiming that a very specific and easy-to-check fact was wrong, so I checked it.
The union is not superfluous to the employees- it is the only thing negotiating on their behalf in a power-imbalanced, often exploitative situation.
The union is not superfluous to the employer- it is actually a hostile counterparty in terms of wages and exploitation.
Thats not to say the added bureaucracy is always welcomed- it sucks.
Can you explain to me where this is a union thing? Like I'd honestly like you to point out and explain your logic why this is specifically because of a union.
The reason why I bring this up is because I have encountered the same issues at my prior jobs which were non-union. Literally the exact same issue, where I was not allowed to move a computer monitor because it had to be done by another department after submitting a formal request.
I feel like people tend to blame unions for everything and yet I see the exact same shit people blame unions for at my non-union jobs. Is that because of an invisible union? Is there something I'm missing?
Some reasons to have unions at tech companies:
IP restrictions, unpaid oncall/overtime, crunch, getting a larger cut of the wealth they produce, better parental/health/timeoff benefits, having a representative in disciplinary hearings, requiring clear salary and performance processes, and about a half dozen other ideas.
You can disagree that these are real concerns at tech companies, but they are not ridiculous.
The union helped Macys layoff thousands of workers including her with no severance in a nice streamlined fashion. I am wrong, but this is what I learned: Unions are basically fat cat organizations that leach hard working people.
That said unions help more than they hurt, in my opinion. It's also pointless to paint all unions with the same brush like that, you worked with a group of people that had bad management. That's can happen in any organization, not just unions.
Not they're not all great all the time but I think the Hollywood unions are something we as tech workers could model ourselves after. You still negotiate your own salary and such but certain benefits like pension/retirement/healthcare (which are great at scale but hurt employers and employees at smaller businesses) can be amalgamated across the membership.
Like for example just a couple years ago the writers unions got into a spat with their agents over double dipping with production companies and not representing the interests of their clients. That kind of bargaining power can be wielded to fix institutional problems across an industry, but it doesn't have to come at the cost of individual gains - the writers still negotiate their own compensation and sign their own deals.
Unions can be a great way for industries to self regulate imo.
Why is this a union thing? No idea. Is it real? Yes.
Perhaps somebody is enjoying some popcorn watching an unending battle between "the invisible hand of the free market" and "an invisible union".
Norway is all oil, Ireland is the tax haven of the Fortune 500, Ditto Switzerland, Monaco is the tax haven of the rich, and Iceland is pure tourism.
Pulling out Iceland or Monaco and comparing them to the entire US is like pulling out Palo Alto and Seattle and comparing them to all of the EU.
UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc are a much better representation of what larger, mores diverse European economies look like.
In fact, if you take the whole EU together (as you should, the US number also includes places like the South and the Midwest), the parent comment is correct.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-...
I lived in Germany for a couple years and now live in one of the poor(er) states. A comment above this says to jettisoning Idaho will game GDP numbers for the US. I'm currently experiencing earthquake aftershocks AND low GDP.
I honestly think for most people, Germany had a high quality of living (if you ignore AC when it's 35 degrees in summer). But in the US, we've got Mammon and, for better or worse, GDP is how we track that.
Like democracies, unions suck, but they are not as bad as the alternative -- unless you're the boss or the generalissimo.
If only there was some sort of system to enforce laws. Oh wait, that only exists in a perfect world where a government actually cares about your rights...
Honestly I get it on both sides, but I really think the union has to be a jerk. It's annoying to most small independent types or middle management areas, but the people in the union need that type of power to influence the BS corporate hierarchy of exploitation to absurd degrees. It's fine to be exploited, it's annoying when the company will drop you in a heartbeat because some minor issue thats come up. If we had laws that at least made it easier for employees to exert their rights (through agencies that the government didn't short change like they love to do) we would have no need for unions. Culturally it'd be a precedent that management can't be dicks.
Management can choose to share profit fairly in a keep what you catch manner so everyone's interests are aligned, and report accounting fairly, to the whole company.
Or Management can choose to do what Bezos did and ruin the retail market by selling at a loss for 2 decades while playing guile and psyop games with the public; he owns washington post BTW. Amazon is terrified of unions because that means they can't be profitable. Agriculture, Warehousing and logistics are major employers of illegal alien labor; the way Bezos makes money is by undercutting brick and morter retailers' supply chain costs because he doesn't have to hire anyone to run a store.
The reason unions form is management gets abusive; this pandemic is one such instance.
It's all unions, all the way down.
That's a guild, not a union. And sure, it's good. As long as you don't care about people that aren't in it right now. SAG does their very best to keep new entrants out.
Regardless, here in the US it is typical for couples to form a partnership in which both income and expenses are shared. Possibly the reason for the recent emergence of the term 'Partner' to describe one's Significant Other.
...unless people are literally dying in the factory. Unions were made for worker safety and made sense THEN - not today.
And they don't work to keep new entrants out. Union workplaces do prefer to hire union members, but if they can't then they'll work to get someone enrolled in the union.
>My girlfriend worked at Macys
>She was paid
>(She) was in a "union"
>Each month we would walk
>we paid "dues"
>we couldn't pay online
>we handed our check
>throw her check
I was just wondering if there was some hidden twist behind the change of subject, so I asked bluntly.
There is nothing magic about unions or democracy which means that they guarantee good outcomes. You have to work at it and be involved. In fact everyone has to.
In other shocking news today's capitalists don't wear top-hats and drive around in Rolls Royces: they wear hoodies and drive modest cars.