Labor unions have harmed our standard of living

on

This Labor Day, as progressives promote their protection and advancement of workers, let’s become aware of the harm that labor unions have caused. George Reisman summarizes:

Far from being responsible for improvements in the standard of living of the average worker, labor unions operate in more or less total ignorance of what actually raises the average worker’s standard of living. In consequence of their ignorance, they are responsible for artificial inequalities in wage rates, for unemployment, and for holding down real wages and the average worker’s standard of living. All of these destructive, antisocial consequences derive from the fact that while individuals increase the money they earn through increasing production and the overall supply of goods and services, thereby reducing prices and raising real wages throughout the economic system, labor unions increase the money paid to their members by exactly the opposite means. They reduce the supply and productivity of labor and so reduce the supply and raise the prices of the goods and services their members help to produce, thereby reducing real wages throughout the economic system.

The full article is Labor Unions Are Anti-Labor.

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.