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12/20/2002 01:41:00 PM | Brad Plumer re: No Icon Mr. Alessandroni, congratulations, you have utterly missed my point. You can continue with your shrill insults and history of the labor movement, but I don't see how either are relevant in any way. I fully understand the importance of unions-- in fact I believe I said exactly that in my last post. I understand that the Nike shoes you insist that I own were made by exploited workers. I don't support exploitation. Do you understand that? My question was, given that we need to protect against the excesses of employers, how do we protect against the excesses of unions? As far as I can see, unions have hampered the quality of teachers. This isn't a "dis", it's an empirically based judgment. Yes, there are thousands of wonderful teachers. But there are thousands of horrible teachers. How do we weed out the latter without hurting the former? Schools can't fire worthless teachers that have tenure, they have to keep giving them raises every year-- I went to an extremely crappy school where this was a major issue. How do we get around this? Maybe it's just me, but pointing to plumber's salaries and calling me "blind and ignorant" really doesn't seem like a solution at all. Finally, I agree, living in NY on $44,000 isn't that great. And many probably make less-- as do McDonald's employees, deli workers, doormen, etc. etc. How much should they make? Just about every union in the city has been growling since Bloomberg got there. Teachers, policemen, firemen. He's compromised with just about everyone, and he's still in a budget hole. Now the hike in property taxes are going to hurt roughly 60,000 private sector jobs-- boohoo you say, but where do you think all this money comes from? From what I gather your only proposal seems to be to have Bloomberg himself cover the deficit with his personal fortune. Do you have a better proposal? To clarify: I'm not saying "screw the MTA workers" at all. But I'm not going to blindly grab my hammer and sickle without figuring out how these things fit into the larger economic picture. If you understand that, and still think I need insulting, fine, fire away. Otherwise stop preaching Naomi Klein in my direction. It's just silly. perma link |
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