Before Occupy

Wow, this seems pretty prescient... "Unions are finding it increasingly difficult to establish themselves in the "new economy." I think they are widely viewed by the working public as being irrelevant or, worse, a hindrance to America's economic expansion. The American worker is a strangely optimistic creature. As individuals, they want to believe that they are exceptional, that through perseverance and hard work they can rise to the top. They think that through this they will eventually rise to the top 20, or 10, or 1% of American wage earners. They think that what prevents them from doing this is a stagnant economy unnecessarily and unfairly hampered by labor unions, too much government regulation and frivolous lawsuits. Once all that clutter is cleared away, free enterprise will thrive, producing a rising tide that will float all boats. They have a President and a pundit class that persistently work at polishing and pushing this myth. They want to believe that just by being exceptional individual workers they could gain on their own in a market competing for their services those benefits unions have won through collective bargaining and years of struggle. This is true only in limited highly competetive industries and, even there, usually only for brief periods of time. They want to believe that government regulation of business has been born out of the fevered dreams of vile overreaching bureaucrats intent on killing the American dream, not out of the need to contain the rapacious greed of business men and women who have no concern for the health and well-being of America or its people or, often, even the long-term health of their own companies and will trample on any right and break any law for their own short term gain. The savings and loan scandals of the eighties, Michael Miliken, Ivan Boesky, Enron, et al, belies this belief. They want to believe that trial lawyers are always greedy self-interested leeches drawing their sustenance from the honest work of others, and not that they may be our last guardians, when those running our government have formed common cause with the worst of the robber barons to ignore, undermine, and undo the restraints experience has shown us must be placed on their rapaciousness, at the expense, and with the deliberate intent, of permanently subjugating the working class." I can't believe I wrote that in January 2005.