Birds of a Feather and Bad Economic Weather

Spending on social programs tends to fall as racial and ethnic diversity increases:

The Divisions That Tighten the Purse Strings, by Eduardo Porter, NY Times: Many Americans are skeptical about government spending on social programs, and they cite a litany of familiar reasons: big government programs aren’t effective, they are vulnerable to waste and abuse, and they run counter to the libertarian, self-reliant spirit of the nation’s founders.

But a growing body of research suggests that America’s antipathy toward big government has another, less-often-acknowledged underpinning: the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity.

Recent studies ... have found that this mix tends to undermine support for government spending on “public goods” of all types, whether health care, roads or welfare programs for the disadvantaged. ...

“Racial divisions and ethnic divisions reduce incentives for people to be generous to others through social welfare,” said Alberto Alesina, a professor of economics at Harvard. “This is very unfortunate. But as social scientists, we can’t close our eyes to something we don’t like.” ...

In their 2004 book, “Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe,” Mr. Alesina and Edward Glaeser, another Harvard economist, applied statistical regression techniques to correlate data on government spending with data on racial, ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity in Western Europe and the United States. The professors concluded that about half the gap between Europe and the United States in public spending on social programs could be explained by America’s more varied racial and ethnic mix. (They said that much of the rest resulted from stronger left-wing parties in Europe.)

As William Julius Wilson suggested in his 1996 book, “When Work Disappears: the World of the New Urban Poor,” many white Americans turned against spending on welfare during the 1970s because they thought that it mostly served blacks. “White taxpayers saw themselves as being forced, through taxes, to pay for medical and legal services that many of them could not afford for their own families,” Mr. Wilson wrote.

In the relative homogeneity of Sweden, by contrast, most taxpayers are confident that social spending programs will be directed to people much like themselves.

This doesn’t mean Americans are stingy. In fact, they contribute much more than Europeans to charity, selecting who they want to help. “It’s not that Americans are bad guys,” Mr. Glaeser said. “They just want to target it.” ...

In another study, published in 1996, James Poterba, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that public spending on education falls as the percentage of elderly people in a given area rises. The reduction, he found, “is particularly large when the elderly residents and the school-age population are from different racial groups.”

In a 1997 study, Mr. Alesina, along with Reza Baqir, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, and William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University, looked at the relationship between social spending and ethnic diversity in 2,700 cities, counties and metropolitan areas across the United States.

They found that in more diverse cities and counties, the share of local government spending on public goods — in this case, roads, sewage treatment, trash clearance and education — was generally lower than it was in more homogeneous localities. “Our results are consistent with the idea that white majorities vote to reduce the supply of productive public goods as the share of blacks and other minorities increases,” they wrote.

Of course, there are some exceptions to the pattern. New York and California, for instance, are among the most highly taxed and most diverse states, although there is evidence that racial and ethnic tensions have whittled away at support for public spending. ...

New York’s history ..., in a way, is a special case: so diverse that no single ethnic or racial majority controls the public purse. “There is no cleavage between an Anglo majority and some poor minority,” Mr. Glaeser said. “In New York, everybody is a minority.”

New York City’s experience ... underscores that diversity does not automatically lead to hostility among ethnic groups or toward government spending as a whole. From public education to intermarriage to the many institutions in civil society promoting mutual understanding, there are countervailing forces acting to overcome ethnic, religious or linguistic cleavages. ...

Still, there is little reason to believe that the racial, ethnic, religious and linguistic antagonisms that have eroded support for social welfare programs in the United States are likely to abate any time soon. Indeed, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants a year from Latin America seems to be sapping support for public welfare. ...

Mr. Alesina certainly expects further conflicts. “One can expect public support for public goods to erode further,” he said. “Public spending in law and order might not go down. What would go down is spending on redistribution.”

Comments

[James Killus]

Tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe around the fact that it isn't racial and ethnic diversity that is responsible for the problem but racial and ethnic bigotry. It's the divisions and devisiveness that define what are considered races and ethnic groups, not the other way around.

Any divisiveness will do the trick, actually. Social class does just as good a job, if you can get the populace to swallow the idea. But a spponful of racism makes the medicine go down much more smoothly.

[Markus]

So, as someone born and raised in the deep South, I know have to wonder, how many Ph. D.s does it take and how many publications do they have to write to point out the obvious.

[Kimmitt]

Ah, but bigotry is a cultural value, and cultural values adapt to economic reality. The moment an African-American takes over the local steel mill, providing the only jobs in town is the moment it becomes okay to work for an African-American.

I think it all depends on whether you view your group as more capable of capturing the rents from public services than others. If you're homogenous, then you all get the rents. If there is a poor minority in town, you might see them as disproportionately capturing the rents. If you're one of several groups in a plurality, then you have no reason to think that anyone else is unusually advantaged or disadvantaged, and your support for public services climbs again.

Alternately, it may just be that the South is toxic. But still, that's gotta come from somewhere.

[Isabel]

I looked up Alesina and Glaeser and found, not the book of course, but this paper from 2001

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/hier/2001papers/HIER1933.pdf

It is a very interesting paper, but the data are from the 90s...

Anyway, if the NYT tiptoes around the bigotry issue, the paper doesn't. The abstract says:

"... the differences appear to be the result of racial heterogeneity in the US.... Racial animosity in the US makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionally black, unappealing to many voters.".

[Isabel]

Another bit I found interesting in that 2001 paper (because it parallels my suspicion that in some important political ways the American society is very anachronistic) is the role of American institutions:

"The relative stability of the US means it is still governed by an 18th century constitution designed to protect property. As world war and revolution swept away the old European monarchies, the 20th century European constitutions that replaced the old regimes were more oriented towards majority-rule, and less towards protection of private property... Many of the European institutions were either directly implemented by revolutionary groups, or a response by elites to the threat of violence."

Soooooo... Will we still hear

"Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, les plutocrates à la lanterne!"?

(For the French-challenged, the original version "Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, les aristocrates à la lanterne" was a French Revolution song that basically says "We will hang them high from the lampposts!")

[Isabel]

Sorry for keeping veering off topic, but it is difficult to resist the pleasure of seing one's view confirmed by such distinguished scholars...

Another thing I "relate" to is the importance of the difference in perceptions of income mobility in the US and Europe (regardless of whether the facts support or not those perceptions):

"There are two types of evidence on this question - actual income mobility data and survey questions about income mobility. Survey questions seem to have the advantage of getting directly at individual beliefs, which should be the direct determinant of voting behavior.... It is certainly clear that Americans believe they live in a country with more income mobility. According to the World Values Survey [date?], seventy one percent of Americans believe that the poor have a chance to escape poverty. According to the same survey, only forty percent of Europeans believe that the poor can escape poverty."

One way of loking at it is as the Portuguese poem by António Gedeão "Philosophical stone" says: "They don't know that dream is a constant of life, so concrete and defined as anything else...They don't know, they don't even dream, that dream governs life and that each time a man dreams the world jumps forward like a colorful ball in the hands of a child". Another one, of course, is like watching Wile E. Coyote running through thin air above a chasm.

Now, I'll shut up and go turn my compost pile.

[reason]

The professors concluded that about half the gap between Europe and the United States in public spending on social programs could be explained by America’s more varied racial and ethnic mix. (They said that much of the rest resulted from stronger left-wing parties in Europe.)

That sentence is parenthesis is toxic. For one it is circular, (surely support for social programs IS left-wing). Secondly, half the difference is still unexplained, and they have only taken a wild guess at what that extra half might be. (And of course it could be that racial diversity is just a proxy for something else - like a history of slavery that explains more).

[ndd]

How "racially diverse" is Kosovo? Think the Serbs and Albanians are ready for social programs? You don't need "diversity", any identifiable "other" will do.

The article is stating the obvious: when a lower middle/working class sees social programs restribute wealth away from it to the poor, for services they themselves cannot get, they will oppose the social programs. Well, duh!

Are Sweden's programs targeted only at the poor, or at the middle class as well? Translating into US terms: so, how many people oppose social security and medicare in our diverse society?

[Tim Worstall]

I've recently used exactly the same facts to argue that it should be the liberals in the US who support States' Rights.
Individual states are less diverse than the nation as a whole so assuming it true that diversity has this effect there would be more chance of creating social democratic (ie Scandanavian levels of welfare) society on a State by State basis, rather than at the Federal level.
We thus have the rather odd point that it tends to be liberals who want things organized Federally while it's the conservatives who argue that power should be a State level.

[freespeech]

Look at France. Sarkozy is popular because he plans to cut immigration and welfare. This resonates with the majority of white French because unemployment is much higher among the Arabs and the blacks, whom the white French perceive to be sponging off their tax euros.

When the system was first set up after the war, France was still highly homogeneous and communities were fairly immobile. There was immediate or at least predictable, foreseeable reciprocity in helping out one's long-time neighbors.

Nowadays, not only are the neighbors foreign-looking, a lot of them don't even work. There is no guarantee of reciprocity in helping out these people. Collectively, the white French see themselves getting the worse deal.

Perhaps the explanation for the differences in welfare spending does lie in demographic differences, with a sub-context in the different degrees of labor participation.

If such should be the case, welfare spendings across nations would converge as populations become more ethnically diverse.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/weekinreview/23uchi.html?ex=1287720000&en=6032fcd106abbd75&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

October 23, 2005

For Blacks, a Dream in Decline
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

THE Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set forth the goal. Civil rights and union membership were to be intertwined. The labor movement, Dr. King wrote in 1958, "must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together in social equality."

That happened in the 1960's and 1970's. But then unions lost bargaining power and members. And while labor leaders called attention to the overall decline, few took notice that blacks were losing much more ground than whites.

In the last five years, that trend accelerated. Despite a growing economy, the number of African-Americans in unions has fallen by 14.4 percent since 2000, while white membership is down 5.4 percent.

For a while in the 1980's, one out of every four black workers was a union member; now it is closer to one in seven. This loss of better-paying jobs helps to explain why blacks are doing worse than any other group in the current recovery. Labor leaders have acknowledged the disproportionate damage to African-Americans, but they decline to make special efforts to organize blacks and offset the decrease, saying that all groups need help. That lack of priority angers one prominent black scholar.

"The future of black workers is very bleak indeed if they lose their place in the union movement," said William Julius Wilson, a professor of sociology and social policy at Harvard. "I would hope there would be an effort on the part of union leaders, white and black, to address this very important issue. They haven't done so as yet."

The decline was particularly sharp last year. Overall union membership fell by 304,000, and blacks accounted for 55 percent of that drop, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, even though whites outnumber blacks six to one in unions (12.4 million to 2.1 million)....

[Lafayette]

EP: they cite a litany of familiar reasons: big government programs aren’t effective, they are vulnerable to waste and abuse, and they run counter to the libertarian, self-reliant spirit of the nation’s founders.

Let’s look at each one of these supposed litanies individually.

Big government programs aren’t “effective”:
1) We forget social security and Medicare/Medicaid. These programs aren’t “effective”?
2) The judicial and police systems are “ineffective”? Firemen are ineffective? The accusation doesn’t hold water, because it focuses on the media-exploited examples of where, indeed, government has been ineffective. (New Orleans and Katrina, e.g.)

Big government programs are wasteful.
1) We make this argument against a number of government agencies, most notably the Pentagon and its hundred-dollar hammer. But, why extrapolate them in condemning all federal functions? That doesn’t make sense, and this sort of conventional wisdom should be dismissed out of hand.
2) If we subsume both health care and education under federal subvention, is there any evidence that a government institution could not manage the public service with acceptable competence. None, because a program that was adapted in size and scope would not be Mission Impossible.

They run counter to libertarian values:
1) Because those values have been either distorted by the prism of historical nostalgia from a time far more simpler than ours of today and,
2) Because Americans have not yet understood that there are public services that, by their nature, level the playing field such that all the players have a better chance at succeeding in a world that will take not only talents and skills but acumen as well. And, we forget a dictum that even the Romans knew well: “A sound mind in a sound body”.
3) Health and education go hand in hand to form the individual, and because of this central importance, they are public services that should be assured by the government.

I would have hoped that, as regards this debate of the role of government in our lives, that we should have found more sound reasons/critiques/ideas than those in this article. The debate merits the effort, because diminishing the weight of the Pentagon on the budget will allow us to do a great many things to better the lives of a great many American who need it badly.

If we know what, indeed, we want to do. The article in question does not address that question.

[ken melvin]

Not so different from the university admission process, these amount to a means of selecting who gets. During WWII, plenty of work, no problem. Extend it to today, the BA is a lab tech and one needs a PhD to have a lab and do research. For those who advocate education as a solution to the labor problem due global trade, same thing; it will determine the distribution of jobs, but it won't create jobs.

[wjd123]

A big countervailing force against the bigotry that arises out of racial and ethic diversity is the Armed Services. There you live side by side with people from every race and ethic background. Many are superior in rank. Some will be those you depend on in a fire fight. People soon become brothers. If not that, military personal are afforded the opportunity to interact with people different than themselves.

Also the pay difference between military personal isn't as wide as that among other professions. This and shared hardships lessen the bigotry that arises out of differneces in social and economic backgrounds.

Finally, most civilians don't mind social programs aimed at military personal because they see these people as protectors of the nations interests first, their racial and ethic differences not withstanding.

[real person from the real world]

This article is TRUE, I remember.... The situation we have now, started 30 years ago, with calls for "personal responsibility" instead of welfare. Welfare "queens" were exposed, and everyone tsk, tsked, about what they had "suspected" all along, that minorities (read blacks) were developing generations of people who "milked" the system: 10 kids by 10 different fathers or the like. You still hear about Utah Mormon poligamous marriages, "bleeding the beast." And now, the big rant is about immigrants (read mexicans), never mind that we snatched most of the SW from Mexico in the 1800s (ever read about the San Patricios? US immigrants from Ireland and Germany who were mistreated by the nativists in the American army, deserted to join the Mexican side, fought bravely, then when Mexico lost, were executed).

Well, if paying for 1 or 2 "Welfare Queens" will improve life for everyone, I say, Long may they reign! Too many people in the country live in their own little enclaves and forts, shutting anyone else not like them out. It is about time for that to change. I know oldsters who maintain conservative views in the face of Republican chipping away at their little nests, because the Democrats are viewed as, "tax and spend" while the Republican spending is ignored. Most of them have their medicare, and while things are tough for them, they are not suffering enough to want a change badly enough that would help everyone. As long as they have their network, and SS and pensions and can manage the bills for their dialysis, and heart problems, the rest of us be dammed.

Hardening of the heart seems to come with hardening of the arteries.

[Lafayette]

Sarkozy is popular because he plans to cut immigration and welfare.

Wrong.

He has proposed “selective immigration” rather than “immigration sustained”. The first means, if you have skills you may be welcome - please apply; the second means, if you don’t have skills, stay home.

The EU predicts that most member countries will need immigrants to complement an inadequate work force.

Neither will Sarkozy “cut welfare”. He’s not stupid, there would be rioting in the streets with likely bloodshed should he, as President, call out the CRS (riot police) to put it down.

He will cut back on the pork barrel, yes. Which means this: When the social security payments are so high that they approach 10% of the minimum wage, there is little or no incentive to work. That will need to change.

Perhaps the explanation for the differences in welfare spending does lie in demographic differences, with a sub-context in the different degrees of labor participation. If such should be the case, welfare spendings across nations would converge as populations become more ethnically diverse. .

The European populations ARE ethnically diverse, and yet there is no evident convergence. in the various national welfare schemes. Largely because it is a national issue (like state rights in the US) and left to the individual member states of the EU.

This means that illegal immigrants pick and chose their country of preference (with a primary selection of language).

Immigrants must be shown that, just because life is miserable in Africa, that they are not welcome in Europe. That has been the case in the past, but Europe is no longer in a position to accept and find jobs for the millions who want to come.

Globalization essentially means that a great many of Europe’s indigenous unskilled labor are going to have to go back to jobs that they left thirty or forty years ago, like collecting garbage. As menial as that work may be, it has two powerful attributes – it wont be dislocated to China anytime soon and it is unskilled labor.

[save_the_rustbelt]

There are a lot of other factors, including economic decline in regions, urban problems, demographics (the elderly tend to live on fixed incomes), etc.

Since the 60s the elites have been trying to paint most of the middle class as racist, and while race certainly has some part of this, it is hardly the only problem.

(Democrats use race baiting to solidify black voting blocks, but we don't disucss that in public.)

White workers are losing union jobs, is that racism or the decline of unions in general?

Flee a city to find better schools for your children, you must be a racist (in Detroit the school board is a clown crew and the teachers' unions run the district, and black parents are fleeing to find better schools - must be racists!).

Beware of simple explanations to complex problems.

[Lafayette]

I would propose as well that we consider the obligations of the state from an historical perspective of transitioning economic parameters.

The Agricultural Age in the US was followed by the Industrial Age in the latter half of the 19th century. This meant a great many people left the farms (with low skills) to migrate to the cities and the wages that factory jobs offered. They thereby learned the industrial skills that allowed them and their children to take the economic escalator to a middle-class existence. (This was done with little or no intervention of the state to either foster of prohibit it.)

Over the next seventy or eighty years, the US gradually perfected its industrialization and, in the latter half of the last century gave birth to yet another age, that of the Information Age. The fullest impact of this age is yet to be seen, but what has happened clearly is a diminishing of industrial jobs particularly at the lower skilled levels. Children today are not being prepared to take the jobs of their parents/grandparents in the factories, because those factories have become highly automated. Manual factory labor is leaving definitively the US for most product areas. (What may remain are specialized manual labor jobs in heavy industry and construction.)

The transitioning of the economy to the Information Age will require a similar enhancement in skills/competencies by the workforce. It will also be necessary that people accept that extreme flexibility in careers/professions is necessary – as one may be required to work at least two or three throughout a lifetime. This latter, I suggest, makes it imperative that the schooling system be adapted to needs of the economy, meaning not just the 3R’s but an entire panoply of skills/professions/trades that are available at all times to those with the will and ability to retrain themselves.

Otherwise, even doctors may be taking jobs as garbage collectors, as they see technological advances that permit doctors in New Delhi operate on patients in Dallas …. at a damn-sight cheaper cost.

[robertdfeinman]

Correlation does not prove causation.

How about comparing the degree of militarism to the amount of social programs?

There is a lot of tax resentment in the US while there is less in the EU even though their tax rates are higher. Why? Because they see what they are getting for their money: health care, education (including free higher education is some cases), child care, unemployment insurance and retirement support.

With half the federal discretionary budget going to militarism this means that, in effect, our income tax is twice what it would be otherwise for the same level of social services.

Studies have shown that most people are totally unaware of how much is spent on various federal programs. For example the typical response to foreign aid as a percentage of the budget is about 20% while in reality it is less that 1%.

There are similar misconceptions about other programs. Even the article glosses over the fact that most people getting low income federal assistance are white.

It is certainly true that black and white perspectives on the degree of racism are vastly different. Something like 80% of blacks see job discrimination against blacks as existing while only about 50% of whites think it exists.

If you haven't seen this nice graphic of where the federal budget goes you may find it interesting:
Federal Pie Chart

[Jenna's Bush]

how many people oppose social security and medicare in our diverse society?

Bush, Chaney, Romney, Brownback, etc., etc., etc.

[anne]

Robert Feinman:

"How about comparing the degree of militarism to the amount of social programs?"

Actually, I think this is a clever comment and the comparison as important as looking to the degree and nature of diversity. We really do have to begin at least thinking of social trades in such terms.

[Bruce Webb]

Utah is an interesting case. It consistently tops the list of states for charitable giving, but that is largely due to tithing. In effect through the Mormon Church they have set up a generous social welfare system targetted to people who share their religion and overwhelmingly their ethnicity. Utahans hate taxes but don't seem to resist what is in effect a super-tax. Because the money stays within their bounds.

In the Northwest historically much of this same kind of work was doing through the Lodge system. You joined a Lodge based on your nationality (Sons of Norway) your occupation (Foresters) your class (Elks) your religion/ethnicity (Sons of Columbus) or your Union Hall. Since until fairly recently all of these membership organizations controlled tightly for race you could be assured that all charitable activity conducted through them was likely to benefit members.

So I think the premise is very plausible. When you can control the limits of your charitable giving/taxes to people you see as "your own" the resistance to giving goes down. Not very pretty, but then here we are.

[dissent]

I think it's tempting to feel somewhat hopeless about social development policies from education to health care when confronted with this study.

But I think it simply needs to be taken into account when designing policies.

This is an argument for giving social policies the broadest foundation. Policies which are for the poor will be underfunded if the poor are disproportionately a discriminated against minority. So focus on polices which help everyone, probably helping the poor the most simply because they have less. Social security works this way, and racial predjudices have no effect on it.

I think it's an argument for broad based educational standards applied to all groups equally. It's an argument for subsidized child care for ALL not just the poor. It's an argument for family friendly policies and job retention policies to build strong communities for ALL.

It's essential to communicate to all voters that these policies are for ALL.

I also think the resurgence of the union movement is critical. The world of work is where we really have contact with one another in this country and creates solidarity across racial and ethnic boundaries.

John Edwards for Prez!

[common sense]

Isn't this obvious?!

Recently, in NYC there was a TRAGEDY: many members of a "family" died in a fire caused by an electrical fault in an overcrowded dwelling.

Although the NY Times did their very best to obfuscate the facts, careful reading revealed the following:

- The 'man of the house' was an illegal allien, from somewhere in Africa (doesn't really matter where he was from, in this illustration)

- He had TWO (or more) "wives", which: a) is illegal in the United States; b) prohibits "the family"'s legal migration into the US; c) finally, (POLYGAMY) is repugnant to the the 'traditional' values of the US -- sorry!

- To top it off, he was -- no shock -- involved in the underground "grey market" for ...what...probably counterfeit DVDs or handbags, like all that crap they distribute on Broadway and 30th Street in Manhattan, AKA "smuggler central"

So, while it is a tragedy that the fire killed many of his (13) innocent children ('anchor babies'), it revealed a rare snapshot of the underbelly of 'cultural diversity' in our great country. Of course, NYC and NYT said nothing about shared 'values' -- this, of course, wouldn't really have been appropriate, given the fire.

Nonetheless, does it really shock you that people convulse at the idea of giving their tax or charity dollars to support people whom they don't know and whose lifestyles and cultures they find repugnant?!

"Taxation without representation" is even more evil when you've no values in common with your "neighbor", particularly when he's an interloper.

[James Killus]

Compassion is sufficiently generalized in human beings that we often feel it for members of other species, make them pets (dogs, cats, etc.), co-workers (Tarzan's Cheetah is 75, hurrah!), welfare recipients (bird feeders, etc.), and even have the phrase "charismatic megafauna" to describe part of the phenomenon.

What's interesting is how this compassion gets switched off, via various sorts of narratives and stereotypes (rude and obnoxious Katrina victims, "Welfare Queens," "they breed like rabbits!" and so on).

The separation of "us vs them" is ubiquitous; it permeates the atmosphere. It's interesting to ask who actually benefits from that divisiveness, as opposed to those who merely think they benefit.

Still, it's always comforting to see someone stating that, in this as in everything else, liberals are to blame. Perhaps this is why the NYT spends so much time on its tiptoes.

[Barry]

Posted by: reason :
" Secondly, half the difference is still unexplained, and they have only taken a wild guess at what that extra half might be. "

In the social sciences, when half of the difference is explained by a factor, that's really big deal.

says...

"The future of black workers is very bleak indeed if they lose their place in the union movement," said William Julius Wilson, a professor of sociology and social policy at Harvard. "I would hope there would be an effort on the part of union leaders, white and black, to address this very important issue. They haven't done so as yet."

So does this article mean to say that people became less judgemental and racist and then revert? Silly!

I think there are other explanations for this decline. Aren't unions in decline anyways? They must not be serving people they way they want. So the workers quit the unions. Maybe they are tired of paying the dues? So what?
Are the union leaders purposely saying to the black workers that they cannot join? Maybe the black workers don't want to join.

I found this article to be backed with little evidence and not very much insight.

[Ninjaplease]

"I think there are other explanations for this decline. Aren't unions in decline anyways? They must not be serving people they way they want. So the workers quit the unions. Maybe they are tired of paying the dues? So what?
Are the union leaders purposely saying to the black workers that they cannot join? Maybe the black workers don't want to join.

I found this article to be backed with little evidence and not very much insight."

Isn't it fun to pretend that recent trade agreements haven't crushed unions in the US? Let's keep guessing at the cause of domestic labor's problems, it'll be fun.