You can have Capitalism and Democracy OR Crony Capitalism and Socialist Democracy.
We have been, and are heading faster toward Crony Capitalism.
How do we know ....
When the 08 recession hit the US, DC was pretty much the only place left unscathed.
Labor is the least expensive ingredient of most projects but the easiest cost to manipulate.
It depends, there is a mathematical optimal ... if it was the least expensive they wouldn't be buying production enhancing technology.
www.khanacademy.org
Then employers figured out that, with the help of politicians, they could move their operations to third world countries and exploit the labor there.
This is why tariffs against Countries that don't conform to our environmental standards and work standards are legit, IMO #FairTradeNOTFreeTrade.
#1 | POSTED BY LFTHNDTHRDS
But basically thats my model, as well, Unions got greedy. Where are the powerful unions today? Public Unions, where the labor can't be moved, and notice it just gets more and more expensive as politician kick the can down the road.
I am involved in a teardown/knowledge transfer of a software development center here in SanJose, I see around the world the costs of engineers/PO/PM from Ukraine, Croatia Poland, China, India. As they spread all of our development to these locations, you can't help but see the communication breakdown.
It would have been better if they sent it to just one location. But managers at the high level only see numbers, not relationships; its strange I have never met one that understood this, its like where did they come from? :)
We don't have a union, but we have constrained resources on engineers and our costs are pretty high here in SiliconValley,relative to RoW. I have noticed a trend towards a bifurcation in the type of companies, either they are a startup (