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Comment by elygre | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, which “barren economy run by labor unions” do you speak of?

I would rather not say because it'll spur an entire subthread arguing over whether the root cause was unions, state corruption, foreign intervention, or any other host of plausible (or not) theories.

I will concede that other people may explain that country's economic failures differently than I do. However, my view is not a fringe one, and since I have left, decreasing worker power has been correlated with a period of relative growth for the middle class.

I've made the jump in the other direction: from an almost-US-style hyper-capitalist country to relatively social democratic countries (first Austria then Germany) & my life here is astonishingly better than in my country of origin (level of economic development is similar, in fact I'd probably be earning more in the country I was born in while paying lower taxes).

So whose anecdotal evidence do we take, yours or mine?

Considering that your anecdotes are about four different countries, rather than two, your last paragraph is needlessly antagonistic.

I was not making a universal claim, so your experience does not contradict my point.

What is your point (asking earnestly)?

My point is that the fates of the working class cannot simply be explained by the US Chamber of Commerce deciding to lobby for themselves in 1970 or the economic organization that might represent. For one, many ailments of low and middle income families can be explained by citizen lobbies: healthcare employs a lot of people, neighborhood groups are famously exclusionary.

You are making a strong claim with fairly weak evidence.

I suggest that you work two 400 Euro "jobs" in two different bakeries simultaneously in Germany and report back after a year.

That wouldn't be legal. There is a minimum wage of 9,35 Euro per hour in Germany. You cannot legally work more than 48,13 hours per month on a 450 Euro mini job in Germany.

I used to speed every day on my way to my under the table construction job. What's legal and what happens are different things.

I assure you such & worse also exists in my home country. It's true that the German speaking countries still have a lot of issues, but it's also true that it's much worse in the more economically right-wing countries.

That is pretty much how the 1970s are portrayed in the UK media - any vaguely left wing policy is usually derided with accusations that whoever is proposing it want to return to the 1970s.

Of course, like all good propaganda there is an element of truth to it but I believe the political situation of the time was a lot more nuanced that current portrayals would have you believe - Dominic Sandbrook's books are rather good.

e.g. Right wing accounts of the UK industrial failure usually omit the effect of absolutely awful senior management in the lot of industries. Of course, left wing account similarly fail to mention the appalling behaviour by some unionised workers.

The astounding thing about the stock rightwing 1970s unions-caused-inflation narrative is that it completely ignores the role of oil price shocks.

Without renewables, oil was an absolutely bedrock commodity, directly influencing the prices of energy and raw materials.

At their peak, oil prices increased by 400%.

But apparently we're supposed to believe that greedy unions were entirely to blame, and oil prices and shortages had no effect on inflation whatsoever. Because cost-push isn't a thing, or something.

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