Asymmetrical Information

And a way of looking at the opposite end, is that plenty of corporations take their investor's money, many of whom are Democrats in mutual funds or pension funds or using professional money managers, and channel it all to the right. Organizations do what they think is in their self-interest. The question, as it always is, is whether only one side gets shackled. I've never heard you worry about the corporate side of this issue before...

And a way of looking at the opposite end, is that plenty of corporations take their investor's money, many of whom are Democrats in mutual funds or pension funds or using professional money managers, and channel it all to the right.

Sorry, Ezra, no. There are very few corporations that channel all their money to the right. Quite a few wealthy corporations channel the majority of their money to Democrats. The computer industry, for example, gave 52% of its money to the Democrats in the 2006 cycle. (Though I suppose you can argue that they channel their money to New Dems and other who are too conservative for your taste.) Of course, being in the majority has an edge either way.

What complicates it further is that in the majority of cases companies do not directly contribute, because they're barred in many states. Top executives contribute, along with their family members and such, and corporate PACs, a decent amount of money which comes from "voluntary" contributions. It's relatively easy to argue that the top executives get the company to give them money for the express purpose of contributions, and so on, though.

Ezra, last time I checked, no one is forced to invest in a certain corporation or mutual fund. Can't always say the same about workers in certain areas with regard to unions.

Consider that while the defense industry has given 60-68% of its money to Republicans in the last 10 years, it also gave 54-59% of its money to the Democrats in 1992 to 1994, when they controlled the levers of power.

Ezra, while there are a few companies that give entirely to the right, the reverse occurs as well. Most of those are fairly small or privately owned companies whose owners are particularly politically active. The really huge companies are bipartisan in their giving, with an extra helping generally to the majority.

guaranteed maternity leave benefits

Ezra, I'm sure many women in America would like to know how they can get those guaranteed maternity leave benefits you credit unions and Democrats with bestowing upon us.

There is FMLA, which forces companies to grant up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for medical reasons after a year of employment, but I know of no specific paid maternity leave benefits like so many European countries have.

While unions do overwhelmingly support Democrats, they haven't hesitated to back up pro-union Republicans in swing districts (former Rep. Jack Quinn of Buffalo, Rep. Chris Smith in New Jersey) making it impossible for the Democrats to target those seats in the late 1990s and hope to get a majority. They tend to support their own interests (shock!) which usually aligns them with Democratic politicians, but often with controversial or conservative Democrats in primaries (Dingell vs. Rivers, 2002) and "maverick" Republicans who their leadership allowed a loose leash in the hopes of keeping the majority.

I assume the idea that no corporations give overwhelmingly to Republicans is too obviously incorrect to refute (and whether a smaller number do the same for Democrats is neither here nor there). Also, union members can opt out of their dues being used for political purposes, so there's no more compulsion there than in mutual fund or pension fund (where there's often little to no choice) investors.

And yeah, I was thinking the FMLA, which acts as a de facto maternity leave law and is, we (and the labor movement) agree, not nearly strong enough.

I assume the idea that no corporations give overwhelmingly to Republicans is too obviously incorrect to refute (and whether a smaller number do the same for Democrats is neither here nor there).

... Actually, that statement there is to overwhelmingly dismissive to warrant further reading of your postings.

Jane_Galt: You made a rather weak response to Ezra_Klein. I would have pointed out all of those are more the result of higher productivity and demand for labor now justifying them, and in some cases is little more than an inefficient, crude diversion of increasing compensation in one area to a form of compensation in another area.

Some of those "victories" are even outright failures. Tying health insurance to employment? Getting a generation of workers to be accustomed to insulation from making health care choices? Defined benefit pensions? (Do I need to go over why that was one of the stupidest demands to make, or can I just quote Malcom_Gladwell's defense of them?) OSHA, that coincided with an end to the secular drop in work-related injuries and deaths?

Ezra,

I completely disagree that FMLA isn't strong enough. Why should a new mother have any more benefits than a guy recovering from illness or injury? It's not as if pregancy and childbirth strike out-of-the-blue. I think it's bad to establish different benefits for different people, because it inevitably causes problems.

My company is full of young women having children, and they all seem perfectly fine with FMLA and using sick leave, vacation leave, and short-term disability to cover the bills, the same way a guy recoving from a broken leg would.

Why should a new mother have any more benefits than a guy recovering from illness or injury?

Because the state has a compelling interest in making it easier for people to have children while maintaining productive employment in the long run. The considerations are different for an injury, not least because children are much more often the result of a deliberate choice, while injuries aren't chosen.

Britain33: the problem with your ad-hoc justification is that the FMLA does not say, "You must hire people, and then allow for the possibility of random 12-week leaves after which you retain their position as determined by a government panel." It simply says, "*If* you're stupid enough to hire people rather than shipping the plant to Mexico or using pure contract labor, *then* you must allow for the possibility of random 12-week leaves after which you retain their position as determined by a government panel."

Since you're not controlling the "if", you're just transforming one kind of compensation for another.

Jane Galt said, "after getting the NLRB to force people to join, unions take the contributions of all their members. . . "

I've never heard of anyone being forced to join a union by the NLRB. Union membership requirements are always tied to employment with a particular company; all anyone who doesn't want to join a union has to do is quit their job.

It's identical to the option employers tended to give union advocates before the NLRB -- if you want to be in a union, just quit your job and go somewhere else.

Brittain-

There are two problems with your argument. The first is a lack of evidence - absent any employment protections for new mothers, would the birthrate in the U.S. fall by enough that it would impact the future of the economy? If not, then your asking for a solution without a problem.

The second is the burden - if "the state" has an interest in making it easier for people to have children, then "the state" should front the funding from general tax revenues - not foist it unequally onto those companies that fail to avoid hiring future mothers (or, heck, fathers).

TWL, I'm just explaining why having a child is not equivalent to breaking a leg. People can debate the efficacy or fairness of the law, and I don't expect many commenters on an objectivist blog to agree with the stated purpose or means of the FMLA.

"can benefit from the health care expansions and worker safety regulations and guaranteed maternity leave benefits and all the other worker-friendly legislation the labor movement convinces the Democrats to pass"

Except that none of those things are actually worker friendly. All of them come at the cost of lower money wages. If they were worth more than they cost in money wages, businesses would have found it profitable to provide them in the first place.

To me they look more like upper middle class people imposing their sensibilities, formed in upper middle class environments with upper middle class incomes, upon everyone else.

I assume the idea that no corporations give overwhelmingly to Republicans is too obviously incorrect to refute (and whether a smaller number do the same for Democrats is neither here nor there).

The refuge of someone who knows that he's lost. Please, look the Open Secrets database. It's very useful. 55-60% of contributions in the Communications/Electronics sector have gone to Democrats in the last 18 years. Certainly there are examples like Verizon and AT&T favoring Republicans (65% and 59%), but Time Warner and Viacom go for Democrats (72% and 80%), as does Disney (58%). Comcast is even. Cisco-- Democrats (61%), whereas Intel-- Republicans (62%). (All numbers from the 2006 cycle.)

Energy generally gives to Republicans-- almost three-quarters when Republicans hold a majority, down to three-fifths when Democrats have a majority.

You show no desire to argue the facts or even become aware of them. Democrats got the majority of corporate money when in the majority. Certain sectors favor Democrats, other Republicans, others are close to even, with a pretty strong shift following who's in the majority.

Of course some companies give near 100% to Republicans. Most of those are fairly small businesses or privately owned, but not all.

91% of Google's money goes to Democrats. Oracle (and subsidiary Siebel Systems) gives to Republicans (65% and 89%). Seagate (hard drives)-- 99% to Democrats.

The biggest overwhelming contributors to Republicans are, of course, in the energy industry-- Exxon (90%), Chevron (86%), and Conoco Phillips (90%), though those are the most tilted companies, many are closer.

Most other industries are pretty close to even, or with a slight tilt to Republicans. Financial/Insurance Companies are typical-- 60-65% to Republicans when Republicans have a majority, 50-55% to Democrats when Democrats have a majority. Law firms have an obvious lean towards Democrats-- 70% of the money towards them majority or not.

Defense follows the gavels. 60% of the money went to the Dems when they had a majority, 60% to the Republicans now. Most of the major companies even follow that ratio exactly-- Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, BAE, L-3, Boeing-- you name it, they gave 55-65% of their money to Republicans in 2006.

Of course, Ezra has already made up his mind based on faith; wouldn't want to confuse him with facts.

In fairness, I should point out that Megan exaggerates-- when Republicans have a majority, on some years they get as much as 13% of union money, primarily from the firefighers, engineers, air traffic controllers, and airline pilots unions, which give up to one-quarter of their money to Republicans.

The statement that Republicans get the vast majority of corporate stockholder's contributions is not correct. Conservative Democrats also get corporate stockholder money.
There are of course, considerably fewer conservative Democrats than there used to be, but whose fault is that?

Ooh--devastating to note how few conservative Dems there are these days. So of like noting how few moderate Republicans there are? Re: contributions, Tom Edsall's recent book traces the changes in corporate giving. When the GOP is in power, the combination of ideological predisposition and actual wielding of power makes the contributions in most corporate sectors overwhelmingly Republican. With the Dems back in the saddle, things even up--but the tilt towards the GOP, when it is in power, is always greater because of the ideological predisposition of most corporate sectors. Interestingly, no one mentioned pharmaceutical or insurance, both overwhelmingly GOP tilted.

Galt/McCardle, notwithstanding all of her bloodless, economic sophistication, doesn't bother with the free rider problem associated with antagonistic union members--or, worse, non-union members in "right to work" states--receiving the same benefits of a collective bargaining agreement as do their more union supportive colleagues. I'll be more impressed with the complaint of these people--and those on this site who complain on their behalf--when they decline the increases in wages, benefits and the access to union representation in the event of a conflict with management. Unions, like nation states, aggregate revenue (taxes or dues), and make spending decisions via a republican, not directly democratic system of government. If you don't like the choices Congress is making with your tax dollars, you can try to change the political cast of Congress--or, I suppose, emigrate. If you don't like the choices that union leadership makes with your dues money, you can try to elect different union leadership--a change that takes place in unions all the time--or, I suppose, as someone here said, find a new job.

As I said earlier, most of this anti-union stuff is smoke, a micro critique masking a far larger and pernicious ideological agenda. Ezra Klein or myself can talk about both the economic and non-economic benefits ( as institutions that nurture a politically engaged civil society, unions have been in the forefront of democratic political change everywhere it has happened in the world, from South Africa to South Korea to Eastern Europe) of a robust labor movement until we are blue in the face. The question is this: Do you accept that labor unions are an endemic feature of democratic capitalist societies in the early 21st century or not? If you do, then you grouse a bit, but don't viciously resist employees exercising a legal right to organize themselves--let alone illegally fire those employees, a frequent outcome which some here, enthusiastically endorse. And you then take a deep breath and negotiate with them, treating them just like your customers, suppliers, lenders etc., i.e. just another part of a corporation's business model going forward. This program produces successes like the UPS/Teamsters relationship (funny, no one claims that UPS is an "inefficient" company, despite the fact that its about 70% unionized--nor Nokia, the Finnish cellphone giant, with about 50% union density. I could go on in this tangent, but I'll stop...) and the city of Las Vegas, which is both one of the two or three most unionized cities in the U.S. and also a enormous economic success story, fueled by the high union wages paid in the gaming sector.

If you don't, you're athwart the accepted belief in every other advanced capitalist nation--yes, every other one, including places like South Korea--and in bed with the free market Stalinist in China and fundamentalist, medieval/post modern autocrats in Saudi Arabia.

You pick--stay angry, stay irrational, or recognize that, despite its current hard times, workers have and will always choose an institutions to represent their interests vs. their employers--rather than remain atomized, singular contractual agents, in the manner of Ms. Gaults libertarian reveries.

yeselson,

Galt/McCardle,

McArdle, I think

notwithstanding all of her bloodless, economic sophistication, doesn't bother with the free rider problem associated with antagonistic union members--or, worse, non-union members in "right to work" states--receiving the same benefits of a collective bargaining agreement as do their more union supportive colleagues. I'll be more impressed with the complaint of these people--and those on this site who complain on their behalf--when they decline the increases in wages, benefits and the access to union representation in the event of a conflict with management.

I begin to suspect that the "free-rider problem" is deliberately kept around for just this sort of occasion. If it were actually legal to accept lower wages or fewer benefits in a union workplace by dissociating oneself from the union, I think I know who'd scream first. But as refusing the bennies and thereby making oneself more attractive to an employer isn't actually an option, it's always fun to taunt people for not having done it, yes?

As it stands, employees in a unionized workplace have to pay up, in dues or equivalent, and it's hard to see why they shouldn't therefore also get the benefits, especially if they joined unwillingly. Let them opt out of the bennies as well as the dues, and we'll talk. But that's not practicable, is it?

Careless with our host's name--my apologies.

Yes, another contextless, ahistoriczed workplace--this time, we have the libertarian/federalist fantasy that employers would selectively create--one by one(!)--a workplace composed of various free agents, each negotiating whether to get into the employer's benefit plans or not. And it would certainly never cross the employer's mind that they were creating a nightmare of morale and productivity problems by segmenting their workforce in a way guaranteed to create intra-employee hostility. Nope--just a nice clean competition between equally powerful rational economic actors--the janitors or hotel maids who take their union benefits, and the janitors who rejects them because SURELY they will radically increase their bargaining power by cleverly making such an offer to their shrewed, penny pinching employer!

Again, a union as a condition of employment is like any other condition of employment--conservatives ought to recognize this argument. There's always a tension between majority rule/minority rights in any institution, in any country interested in democratic self-rule. If you are so aggrieved at paying union dues or an equivalent, then you can quit the job. This is more or less what some lefties threatened to do after Bush was reelected--they didn't like the results of an election, they thought it ruined their "workplace" or in this case, their nation of citizenship, and they threatened to go to another country. Most of us stuck around however, and sought to change the government. Anti-unionists can also seek a decertification of a union after one year, seek to change the leadership of the union--or they can quit the job. They've got options besides complaining.

Again, as I said, all of this has to do with whether you accept the institutional legitimacy of unions in a democratic capitalist society. If you do, then they simply become part of the web of organizations, attendant to various laws and regulations, that a modern citizen has to deal with. If you don't--you come up with specious arguments like many of the ones above, including your own--and you end up as the outliers of the advanced capitalist world.

Unions are, in fact, creatures of capitalism, creations of capitalism--workplace inequities inevitably generate a collective response. Efforts by the State to oversee some of the gains of unionism cannot be sustained unless the union movement remains robust--that's the leverage required so that the State takes its regulatory responsibilities seriously. In alleged socialist societies, unions were neutered by tethering to the State, or destroyed. In other authoritarian regimes, they are also routinely abolished or sharply limited.

So, again: You choose. Which side are you on? Democratic capitalism, as it is actually is, in 2007--or the Saudis and the free market Stalinists in China.