Uniouns, good for, bad for, indifferent on the economy?

[JCricket]

We have been talking about free speech, ethics, and econims this morning. I was thinking about unions(thanks to a fellow poster). I have not spent a lot of time on this, so this post is really me thining out lod. I am going to jot done some thoughts and would like someone to tear this apart logically. I have to tell you, when I thought this through, I really suprised myself with what came out.

here goes...

Are unions good for, bad for, or have little impact on our economy. I guess this could be divided into two sections. First unions at their infancy, and today. I am considering today as my topic.

To do this I used two ethical approaches(thus needed to define the "good"). One approach is utilitarian(farily democratic in my opinion). The other was the ethical egoist(a farily republican approach).

Utilitarian at first glance seem like it would be bad for the company and thus bad for the economy. But is it? Utilitarian states taht whatever is the most good is the right course of action. A union shop is expensive, it costs a lot in wages, but these wages translate into more jobs and greater buying power of the general populace. Further, they(wages) cause other compainies through the sale of their product to grow and also strenghen our economy. And another, non-union companies have to compete at least a little bit in their pay to employess to keep them(well I like to think so). Another benefit, it makes the management work hard to be able to compete with other non-union/less cost producing companies to compete. Thus, hopefully a better product for all in the market place. The negative I see is actually for the employees of the union shop. Sure, better money and benefits, but frequently they also get the attitude of entightlement and laziness. This is a very degrading thing for those menbers. So overall, I think the utilitaruiion approach says unions are good for the economy.

In the Ethical egoist approach, no one is entightled to anyting. You are responsible for your well being and don't ask me to pay for you - so it says if I understand it and paraphrased it correctly. My primary focus was again on the work needed by mangement to compete in the market place. It makes it very difficult to sell their product in a market place and do so competively. But tehy can do it(well maybe not these days with china crunching us). Also, it forces companies outside of the union shops to behave in certain ways. They could choose otherwise, but the force of the unions' existance does in fact have an impact on all companies. In this example the employees would be unethical(in a sense), the companies may or may not be, and the public benefits again.

So yeas on both sides of the aisle, from a democratic and republican(suprised me too) perspective, unions do ah vea good influence on the economy.

Like I said, thinking out loud.
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