on money (in the abstract)

[Joseph Tracy]

Finally I agree with Alice on something as far as the union compliance with anti-communism undermining of the core union principle of solidarity among workers. ( And the unions and the right actually had a legitimate cause for spite in Stalinist communism) But I think Richard is talking about a balance of economic power, which prevailed in the US up to the  raygun period and the re-emergence of hard core laissez faire with M Friedman. Unions retained a lot of bargaining power in politics and economics  until the mid 70s and used it effectively .

Wellintown,your leaps of logic are hard to take. 1st you say "Not True ", then you say "And if it were, this is a simple misreading". How can a simple misreading be true? and why can't it be a simplified reading of a period that stresses a particular point. That is what the generalities of language are all about.  
On Nov 25, 2011, at 5:16 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

>> There was a fairly long spell where Big Labor balanced Big Business. That
>> balance is gone as we have entered another Gilded Age. It is no conspiracy.
>> It is the effective work done by the right in right-wing think tanks,
>> right-wing funding of candidates in elections ranging from local to national
>> and it is the work of the oligarchy.
> 
> Not true. And even if it were, this is a simple simple misreading of a
> complex history. The blow to labor, the major blow, came with the War
> and then the Cold War. The Cold War, and the elimination of communists
> from the labor movement, and this was done, remember, in large measure
> by labor itself, but also by the government, by religious groups, by
> veteran groups, by immigrant groups, and yes, by business, and by
> general paranoia and rational and irrational actions of ordinary men
> and women (the same kinds of focres that cause bubbles in markets).