> So they pass costs on to consumers as well as pushing those out of work that would compete with them. This is pretty straightforward - and demonstrated in the literature as I posted
The literature you posted demonstrated no such thing. Again, you're now making expansive claims that are interpretations well beyond the scope of these papers, using "first principals" and "common sense" -- they show that unions increase wages at the cost of slightly raised unemployment among certain groups. There is no free lunch, but unions eating lunch at the expense of shareholder profits is absolutely a good thing and the point. Their affect on consumer prices was not demonstrated by your literature, but I assume you're going to make the same false libertarian argument against "minimum wage" -- that it raises some consumer prices and unemployment, and therefore, should be abolished (in spite of the massive evidence that's shown that it's been radically effective at lifting people out of poverty while having little effect on both)?
Your blanket condemnation of unions is ideological.
> Unions Reduce Inequality. You keep parroting this claim, despite my just having shown you multiple papers clearly demonstrating that this is simply untrue. Those people now unemployed in those papers, those not getting jobs in the future because unions stagnate growth - are they now better off and more equal?
Ok, here's a source that supports that unions actually increase productivity, that's about 20 years more recent than the source you posted.
"In total, results suggest that right to work laws work as intended, increasing economic inequality indirectly by lowering labor power resources. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed."
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/708067
Union Density Effects on Productivity and Wages
"Accounting for selection effects and the potential endogeneity of unionisation, the results show that increasing union density at the firm level leads to a substantial increase in both productivity and wages. The wage effect is larger in more productive firms, consistent with rent-sharing models."
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/130/631/1898/5824627
"Decompositions based on public-sector earnings indicate that increases in union density have produced inequality that is 29 percent below what it otherwise would have been"
> A union is a monopoly on labor, which has all the downsides of monopolies on goods or production.
I appreciate your citation of those papers, but I feel that this is an unjust comparison -- unions raise wages for workers even outside of their industry, whereas industrial monopolies frequently depress wages and raise prices for the benefit of a privileged few (generally executives and large shareholders). Unions are, historically, a reaction to that power imbalance of industrial monopolies, and attempt to counter diminished bargaining power. Unions increase economic equality, while industrial monopolies decrease it.
This reminds me of the debate over universal healthcare -- critics asserted that it decreased labor force participation, and was therefore a failure, when others argued was that it was evidence of its success--as people who wanted or needed to quit their job, such as those also acting as a caretaker, but previously didn't yet qualify for medicare, could finally retire.
Abolishing slavery also increased unemployment, as do raising interest rates -- the youth unemployment rate is a single data point to be balanced with other economic indicators that at the end are simply tools to tell a story about the prosperity of a society. Unions density, low poverty rates, and high wages are correlated across not just states but the entire world.
Seems like speculation / projection. If your argument about unions and extremism was supported, you’d expect to see a correlation between high union membership and “extremism”. If anything, countries with high union density (Sweden, Iceland, Finland) seem to have fewer extremist parties than low union countries like the United States, The Philippines, and Poland. In the United States, the long-term decline in industrial union power, as also seen in Great Britain during the Thatcher “union-busting” era, has presided over an increase in extremism.
So whatever effect union has in employment, it’s not the kind that is shown to lead to extremism.
Again, you cited a paper claiming that it supported that “unions == unemployment” when all it said was that unions are correlated with small increases in unemployment among the very young and very old.
What we know is that union membership is shown definitively to result in better working conditions and safety, higher job satisfaction, and higher wages across entire industries.
> Unions often drive out workers at the benefit of those getting union jobs, lowering employment. For example, see [5] and similar papers.
This seems a bit misleading from the article you referenced:
“The researchers find that, for both men and women, more union involvement in wage setting significantly decreases the employment rate of young and older individuals relative to the prime-aged group (with no significant effects on the relative unemployment of these groups). In contrast, a larger role for unions has little impact on male-female employment rate differentials but raises female unemployment relative to male unemployment.”
Lower employment for the very young and very old is generally a good thing in places with a robust welfare state —- and certainly is overshadowed by the positives of unions, such as the lower rates of poverty, lower mortality and accident rates, and higher job satisfaction and overall wages as a percentage of productivity across many industries.
The literature you posted demonstrated no such thing. Again, you're now making expansive claims that are interpretations well beyond the scope of these papers, using "first principals" and "common sense" -- they show that unions increase wages at the cost of slightly raised unemployment among certain groups. There is no free lunch, but unions eating lunch at the expense of shareholder profits is absolutely a good thing and the point. Their affect on consumer prices was not demonstrated by your literature, but I assume you're going to make the same false libertarian argument against "minimum wage" -- that it raises some consumer prices and unemployment, and therefore, should be abolished (in spite of the massive evidence that's shown that it's been radically effective at lifting people out of poverty while having little effect on both)?
Your blanket condemnation of unions is ideological.
> Unions Reduce Inequality. You keep parroting this claim, despite my just having shown you multiple papers clearly demonstrating that this is simply untrue. Those people now unemployed in those papers, those not getting jobs in the future because unions stagnate growth - are they now better off and more equal?
Ok, here's a source that supports that unions actually increase productivity, that's about 20 years more recent than the source you posted.
"In total, results suggest that right to work laws work as intended, increasing economic inequality indirectly by lowering labor power resources. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed." https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/708067
Union Density Effects on Productivity and Wages "Accounting for selection effects and the potential endogeneity of unionisation, the results show that increasing union density at the firm level leads to a substantial increase in both productivity and wages. The wage effect is larger in more productive firms, consistent with rent-sharing models." https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/130/631/1898/5824627
"Decompositions based on public-sector earnings indicate that increases in union density have produced inequality that is 29 percent below what it otherwise would have been"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12122-997-1048-x