Only way to clear multi-cultural American market (especially labor market): high union density

Re:  Check Your Economic Bias  --  Noah Smith 
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-30/keep-bias-in-check-in-economics-and-social-sciences
 

" ... some measure of welfare will lead [some] economists to oppose redistribution taxation, which makes the economy somewhat less efficient ... "

Does any rearranging economic flows make the economy less efficient or productive: even adding or subtracting rentiers and monopolists -- or just rearrange the same overall distribution?  The perfectly free market people may be right that, if left alone, the market will achieve max efficiency and productivity.  Ideology blinds them to the same eff and prod reached under almost any market configuration, e.g., no unions, half unions, all unions (equivalent of all co-ops).  Unless some human factor intervenes, e.g., the rich slow down the velocity of spending, the poor are much less productive because ill educated, etc.


" ... how much taxes discourage work ... "

Low pay (in relation to the productivity of the era) can discourage work.  I'm too old now (71) but you wouldn't find me (American born ) driving a taxi today -- as I did for 28 years in NYC, Chi and SF.  Used to make some thing like $12 an hour in Chicago, more like $18 in SF in 2004. 

Would guess they make more like $8 now in Chicago only because I cannot imagine them working for less (but don't quite see how they make that with 40% more cabs, meter 50 cents a mile lower than when I started in 1981, since when the city put on trains to both airports and unlimited limos.  SF doubled number of cabs since I left in 2004. 

In Chi new supermarket employees are much more likely below child raising age since Walmart forced two-tier contracts.

In Chi 100,000 out of I guesstimate 200,000 gang-age, minority males are in street gangs.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/

In 1956 folks were very happy to work for a minimum wage of $8.75 an hour because the overall productivity of their society (40% today's) led them to feel they were doing relatively well.  Ditto for 1968's $11 an hour.

Did anybody see the movie Bye, Bye Braverman (1968)?  View a bunch of upper-middle class Manhattanites.  Their small apartments would make most people today feel very constricted.  They never heard of an "up to date" kitchen.  They didn't know the difference.

Market configuration and clearing conclusion: If you have no to almost no unions (also possible with half unions but politics might ameliorate much of the clearing gap then) -- and -- you have  two segments of the work force with very different ideas about what makes at least minimally satisfactory employment  (economist call that a reserve wage I think) then you can have a huge dropout of people looking for work.

Bottom line: in a two-tier expectations workforce -- if the consumer is not being tested by labor (via collective bargaining -- especially centralized bargaining) to discover the max said consumer will pay -- if instead labor is paid according to what I call subsistence-plus (want a little more; pay a little more); according only to how much labor is worth in reference to other labor: a big drop out from the workforce is likely to happen  ...

... with all the attendant loss of efficiency (including police chasing people around) and productivity.

Upshot to all this: the only way to clear the labor market (or just the market) in a multi-cultural, endlessly inundated with immigrants labor market like America's is to reach very high union density (Continental European-like).  Testing the consumer's willingness to pay to the max across the board, everywhere much shrinks the range of income from top to bottom.  It is thus in America the only market oriented answer to so-called "inequality" -- I prefer "Great Wage Depression". 

Is market structure a zero-sum game?

I'm working up a concept to take all the umph out of the unregulated market fetish: the concept recognizes that which particular way markets are structured (e.g., union/non-union) can be just a zero-sum game -- as far as overall output results.  And that is even assuming that a more equitably power-balanced market is not for NON-MATHEMATICAL (social reality) reasons actually much more productive (and healthy).
 
Leaving us perfectly free to structure markets with the greatest good for the greatest number in mind.
 
In a high union density (or a high co-op, that is employee owned) market consumers will pay more for less goods from firm "A" -- causing some of firm "A"employees to lose jobs; and because consumers who continued to patronize firm "A" in spite of higher prices now have less money to spend over at firm "B", some employees will be laid of fat firm "B" also.  If the employees of "A" now hide their new pay raises under their mattresses that will be the end of the economic effects.

But I'm guessing that the employees of firm "A" will have a propensity to spend their new incomes at firms "X", "Y" and "Z" and don't forget "B" and don't forget even "A" -- making jobs for the formerly laid off employees of "A" and "B."  And the prepetual motion dollars just keep going round and round -- as long as they keep circulating among people with the same (middle class?) propensity to spend. 

I would plead that the more prices are set on the maximum the consumer is willing to pay labor -- and less on the Iron Law of labor -- the more equitably production will be shared around.  It is more like consumer preferences v. consumer preferences doing the market clearing.
 
Of course, in the real world if you squeeze too much income to the top, then, you will IMMEDIATELY (as opposed to the LONG RUN; we'll get to that) slow down the economy unless the most of the beneficiaries of the squeezing have the propensity to spend of Larry Ellison.  Sort of like QE doesn't work well if the banks don't lend all that liquidity the Fed is forcing down their throats.
 
The long run is the real story -- even if more equal distribution meant less efficiency; even if not a zero-sum game.  
 
Just as import substitution, etc. by underdeveloped economies would lower world output on ONE DAY -- but -- AFTER a couple of decades of hiding behind tariffs, etc. the now more productive economy will raise overall world output ...
 
... even if more equal distribution made our domestic economy less productive on ONE DAY -- after a couple of decades of better education, better food, better lives for the previously poorly paid employees the economy will be more productive overall (but it really is a zero-sum game) -- and life will be better all around (e.g., much more crime free).
 
That's what I'm working up.

Pepper spray can restrict an active shooter

How to protect schools — and other public places — from active shooters: available pepper spray cans should be emptied into the hallways; then, doors closed and windows opened. That could make it impossibly uncomfortable for the shooter to move around the building.

Back in the early 70s, I stayed for a while in a “pre-detention center” down the block from Washington Square Park, formerly known as the Village Plaza Hotel. Every so often we had a “Mace party” — sprayed one shot of pepper spray up in the air in the lobby and then all ran outside until we could breath inside again. Once a couple of dope fiends came downstairs to the Coke machine — we yelled for them to come outside in the street but at that point in their day you could have comfortably removed their appendixes.

In grade and high schools the teachers could carry. Elsewhere managements could carry. Would definitely work sometimes.

How to protect schools — and other public places — from active shooters: available pepper spray cans should be emptied into the hallways; then, doors closed and windows opened. That could make it impossibly uncomfortable for the shooter to move around the building.
Back in the early 70s, I stayed for a while in a “pre-detention center” down the block from Washington Square Park, formerly known as the Village Plaza Hotel. Every so often we had a “Mace party” — sprayed one shot of pepper spray up in the air in the lobby and then all ran outside until we could breath inside again. Once a couple of dope fiends came downstairs to the Coke machine — we yelled for them to come outside in the street but at that point in their day you could have comfortably removed their appendixes.
In grade and high schools the teachers could carry. Elsewhere managements could carry. Would definitely work sometimes.
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