I know the money supply, or size of our economy is limited solely to our imagination, as it is our invention and production of those inventions, be it a product, a service, or mixture of these that are how those things that generate work, jobs, and new inventions exist in a perfect Capitalist cycle.
However, to Humanist religion practitioners, in perfect “catch 22” fashion, who are the driving force of the “Secular Progressive Left” (i.e. Man is God in the absence of God), they act upon an assumed limit to the amount of money possible. They brand any who have more than someone else as “the wealthy” in comparison to those with less -- a term of art to disparage those who achieve greater sums of money than others by applying their talents to invention, and producing that invention by the most base mechanism of Capitalism known as “bargaining,” legally referred to as a contract.
Of course this takes us to “Collective Bargaining,” which often includes more than just wages, but also discusses safety issues, vacation pay, and other “benefits,” of which the most significant is the “Retiree's Pension Trust Fund Plan.”
While the unions make every effort to organize workers in non-unionized sectors to push for a “living wage” (another term of art, engendering the fallacy of guaranteed income by redistribution, which is an affirmation in the belief of, and method to assure, an overall limited amount of money), the unions also invest their pension funds throughout the financial sector via banking (credit union), to stocks and bonds, hedge funds, and in commodities.
Understand Union Pension Managers are very good at making money from other people's money in a Pension Trust Fund. Here's a link to CalPERS, California's public sector union's Pension Trust Fund, http://www.calpers.ca.gov/, with market value for market close of May 21, 2015 of $308 Billion, or 1/3 of the current national government deficit. I highlight this because the erroneously blamed crux of the problem explained by some union spokepeople or Progressives espousing a higher national minimum wage is, “these corporations make billions in profits and can easily afford to double their employee's wages.” Now for a screen shot of CalPERS at $182 Billion from December of 2008, visit this site: https://web.archive.org/web/20081228041044/http://www.calpers.ca.gov/. Please note this isn't CalPERS’ lowest value for 2008-2009 so clearly around 120 Billion dollars has been made in 7 years by this one Public Sector Union Pension fund, or $17 Billion per year! Isn't it interesting that the union spokespeople and Progressives, often funded in some manner by hedge fund manager Progressive George Soros, all ignore this massive growth in pension fund net worth? And what makes it so much more irritating is that this is a Public Sector Union meaning: The Pension Trust Fund value is the total amount of wages withheld by government from Public Sector Employees, servants of the People -- withheld and managed by the same government paying these unionized government workers from your tax dollars. It appears the whole thing is a government & union working together scam to bilk we the people, notice the “.gov” website link? If it were a corporation we'd be hearing “fascists” from all quarters, but since it's only a Labor Union acting identically to a corporation we're giving it a pass.
I applaud the Huffington Post for picking up on this AP Investigation of CalPERS fund manager's bonuses, though I figure it's to highlight the last line stating what then Governor Schwarzenegger said, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/. It's worth noting that the Senior Fund Manager, Ted Eliopoulos who netted $400K when the fund had lost almost $60 Billion dollars, became the “Chief Investment Officer” for CalPERS, and he then moves to get the fund out of investing in hedge funds, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/.
Interesting isn't it how the screams for McDonald's, and before they caved, Walmart, to “pay a living wage” by raising their hourly rate, and Obama's push for a higher minimum wage, all ignore that the profiteering greed mongering face of the “Wall Street Investment Mogul” is Public Sector Union institutional investors exploiting their tax-exempt pension wealth, where those making the investments make money on union employees’ money that originated from taxpayers?!
And to add insult to injury, let's look at Netflix, first via NASDAQ itself, http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nflx/ownership-summary. Notice the Institutional Investor ownership is almost 90%! And in the details, according to Stockzoa, the largest holder is a public sector union out of Ohio, http://stockzoa.com/ticker/nflx/, and as you follow the links you end up at the SEC.gov site (use your browser's “search on page” and type in “Netflix”) where Netflix is right in the filings of the State Teacher's Retirement Board of Ohio (i.e. “OTR” apparently soon to be their acronym).
I want to post more but this would end up 50 pages long and not even scratch the surface. What must be said: unions are institutional investors, and they are investing in corporations and commodities to the tune of $5,000,000,000,000 yes that's Trillion illustrated. How is this different than corporate raiders and other investors? It isn't, in fact Credit Unions even “merge,” http://finance.yahoo.com/news/.
The difference is that this originates from union money, and this is far down in the list, but see 26 USC 401 (i), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/401. Go figure, every pension is a “Pension Trust Fund,” http://thelawdictionary.org/pension-trust-fund/ and http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/pension-trust-fund/. And that's on top of Credit Unions, who also make these same institutional investments and are explicitly tax exempt https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.501, an exemption they want to fight to keep, http://www.nafcu.org/cutaxexemptionissue/. While Oblahma blah blah blah's about “fundamental fairness,” the unfair advantage of tax exemption for both Pension Trust Funds and their Credit Union counterpart, is sucking up the profitability of a level free-market playing field for individual & small business investors to larger corporations, profits that would prompt increases in spending in offset, including higher wages for their employees. Please make specific note of this fundamental unfairness of the carve-outs for unions, the abuse of it by their 1% salaried Pension Trust Fund managers, and their Credit Unions, the next time you want to get mad at a corporation for lobbying for their own carve-outs. We can no longer ignore how special treatment of unions in both the public and private sector provides them with tax free use and exploitation of large pools of money that has large scale, market-affecting, financial influence that suppress profits and wages in all other sectors of the economy.
I'll leave you with Michael Masters’ testimony regarding institutional investors, and how it was the unions’ first time venture into crude oil futures speculation that led to the price increase to almost $150/barrel that was a catalyst, if not cause, for the 2007-2008 financial collapse, http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf.
God Bless you and thank you for reading and sharing this,
Toddy Littman
P.S. Note that it was President Clinton who, it appears, acted upon Eric Holder's advice, pardoned Marc Rich “who invented Oil Trading,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/26/.
