The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top

Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by pessimizer on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:12PM (#9248256)

>Look how teachers' and police unions across the country have pushed relentlessly to collect unsustainable benefits

>I hear unions work okay in Europe. They haven't in the U.S.

The kind of benefits that teachers and the police ask for are universal in western Europe, and are sustainable due to taxation that is closer to the rates that the US had during its economic rise, rather than the rates during its current fall.

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Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by rayiner on Sunday March 22, 2015 @06:19PM (#9248497)

> The kind of benefits that teachers and the police ask for are universal in western Europe

Not at all. The average U.K. universal pension is about $9,000 per year. The average U.K. teacher pension payment is only $15,000 per year. The average Chicago teacher pension payment is $42,000 per year.

Moreover, average teacher pay in places like Chicago is far higher than in places like Germany or the U.K. http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/48631286.pdf (D.3). A Chicago police officer with 2.5 years on the force makes $65,000. A U.K. officer with double the experience makes only $46,000 per year: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12678661.

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Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by yardie on Sunday March 22, 2015 @08:08PM (#9248794)

You are cherrypicking facts by comparing the pay of a large, expensive, city to an entire country. Either do country to country or equivalent cities. While an officer in the UK might only makes 46K I'm fairly certain an officer in central London makes quite a bit more.

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Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by rayiner on Sunday March 22, 2015 @09:05PM (#9248941)

Chicago is 16% more expensive than the U.S. average, while consumer prices in the U.K. are about 10% higher than the U.S. So it's really a wash. Comparing country to country would be pointless, because most U.S. teachers are not unionized. The point is to demonstrate the impact of a particularly dysfunctional teachers' union. San Francisco or New York would be other examples, but the cost of living there is vastly above the U.S. average.

As for London--average police pay is 45,500 pounds ($67,000): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084505/Generous-pay.... So a Chicago police officer with just 2.5 years of service earns about as much as the average London cop does in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

The average Chicago police pension is $57,000: http://www.weareonechicago.org/documents/waoc_fact_sheet.pdf. The average U.K. police pension is $23,000: http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/305105/Police-pensions-bill....

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Re:The decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes a... by owen_griffiths on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:32PM (#9248341)

"are sustainable due to taxation that is closer to the rates that the US had during its economic rise"

European taxation takes far more from low income people than taxes in the US. The US gets the highest proportion of it's take revenues from the top 10% in the OECD.

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