Attacking unemployment

I do think that my first commenter, Harrington, is right that it’s high time to start giving labor unions more recognition and power. That might seem a bit counterintuitive — unions have never been very good at improving employment numbers, as opposed to improving the plight of the employed. But if workers at places like Wal-Mart start being paid a decent living wage, that is surely a significant improvement on where we are now. And if we raise the minimum wage to a point where employees are less likely to quit and more likely to learn reasonably high-level skills, that will help get us to Richard Florida’s promised land. Without unions and minimum-wage laws, corporations compete on who can pay the least. With them, they compete on who has the best employees and they invest significantly in those employees. Which is exactly what we want, especially since raising the minimum wage is unlikely in and of itself to increase unemployment visibly.