Liberals created gentrification

[Ryanrule]

of course liberals gentrify.
conservatives dont have any money.

[Dr Nevergold]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Construction unions in the NYC area do make "exorbiant" pay, at least by my subjective views. Skilled tradesmen can make more than the executives signing their paychecks.

When you see a tower going up in NYC, the average person involved in the construction is making multiples of the city average salary. Those costs are obviously passed on to consumers and affect overall affordability. When the city wants to build subsidized housing, the strict union-only requirements makes affordable housing production much more costly.

I think you've just made the case for why unions are good for the middle class.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

;

The U.S. has lots of public holidays, which people traditionally take, they're just not "government-mandated" time off.

Yes, in the U.S. some people get stuck working on Christmas Day. It's usually up to the staff to decide who wants to lose a given holiday this time around.

On the other hand, Americans don't have to spend over an hour plus driving to 5 different grocery stores to find one that's open to buy fucking bread, as I had do this past Monday in France because it was Pentacost (what the hell is this, btw?). It's nice for everyone else to have things open on holidays, and working on Christmas every few years when it's their turn won't kill anyone. Professionals do at least some work on most holidays.

Actually that raises another point, which is that this has less to do with unions and more to do with the church. Note that most of the countries at the top of that list are Catholic. The U.S. doesn't mandate Good Friday or things to be days off for everyone because not everyone is Christian.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

a CEO can earn a salary more than what most workers will earn in a decade, receive transportation/meal/expense account perks/stock options, drive a business into the ground and walk away with millions in the form of a golden parachute because he has the luxury of being able to negotiate those terms. and yet a low level employee cant even negotiate an extra day of paid time off.

Most CEOs at major public companies earn annual compensation worth more than most workers earn in a lifetime. If the BLS is to believed, the "average" CEO, which would include a lot of very small companies, only earns a few times the median family income - a statistic most people would probably be fine with. I don't know anyone who believes a CEO should be paid the same as workers, just not 300 times as much as workers.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

and this raises an even larger point. planning isnt an exact science, and its definitely not a a hard science, its a social science subject to trends and notions of the day. 1950s, lets stack all poor people in brand new high rises in odd parts of town. 1960's lets keep doing that. 1970's outdoor malls are all the rage! you get my point. the problem is however that its really a socialist construct within a greater capitalist economy. we can't have it both ways so somehow those two systems need to split the difference. so who is right? capitalist or socialist? maybe both. one great irony i always find humourous, the density profile of rule happy portland, oregon is nearly identical to free wheeling, no zoning houston...

Yes, well put. There are a lot of similarities between the ubiquitous appearance of land use in capitalist and socialist economies. The attack on soviet style apartments in capitalist countries underlines the notion of sameness and blandness in housing that we like to dump on "other" systems than our own. I don't for the life of me see "liberalism" dictating gentrification of a given area, except maybe in rediscovering less savory or overlooked parts of town. People find fault with gentrification even in areas where the bulk of reuse is in industrial rehabilitation into condos, and the concomitant construction of new loftlike units on unused parcels. Griffintown in Montreal is finally taking care of the disused/abused neighborhood which otherwise looked like a cancer near the heart of the city. There will be naysayers and this is to be expected but people are moving in and the added dimension of new residents in this area is already improving the commercial offer on streets a good distance from its epicenter. My neighborhood of
"Little Burgundy" is improving because of it.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Dr Nevergold

I think you've just made the case for why unions are good for the middle class.

How does the middle class benefit by having their housing costs go up due to extreme labor costs? Housing costs are the biggest portion of most people's budgets, and labor costs are the biggest portion of construction projects.

Crane operators can make 500k+. It isn't clear to me why paying them 5x the salary anywhere else in the developed world somehow filters down to benefitting the middle class at large.

And this isn't an issue of "union vs nonunion". I'm talking about a specific class of worker, regardless of union status, that earns outrageous salaries due to having localized political clout.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Crawford

How does the middle class benefit by having their housing costs go up due to extreme labor costs? Housing costs are the biggest portion of most people's budgets, and labor costs are the biggest portion of construction projects.

Crane operators can make 500k+. It isn't clear to me why paying them 5x the salary anywhere else in the developed world somehow filters down to benefitting the middle class at large.

And this isn't an issue of "union vs nonunion". I'm talking about a specific class of worker, regardless of union status, that earns outrageous salaries due to having localized political clout.

I don't see any evidence of a significant portion of crane operators earning that much. The average is about 1/10th that much and you have to be pretty far into the tail of the distribution curve to get to even six figures. Out of the thousands of buildings requiring crane operators every year, if there are a couple with such complexity that some sort of super-elite operator is required, then I don't think paying them as much as a typical city doctor is really that big of a deal. It's certainly not average or typical from anything I've seen, and if you think it is, post data to back up your claims.

Is the average software programmer worth $500,000 per year? No. Is there some small fraction of software developers who are worth that much in salary? Yes. I don't see why that shouldn't be true for other industries, too.

[mhays]

Crawford seems to have misread the crane operator thing....mistaking "what it costs to employ a crane operator" for "wages" and probably including a multi-year duration.

[chrisvfr800i]

Originally Posted by mhays

Crawford seems to have misread the crane operator thing....mistaking "what it costs to employ a crane operator" for "wages" and probably including a multi-year duration.

Some real #s:

Tower crane operators cost us $98.50/hr to employ, of which $85.00 is wages & benefits.

So if an operator works all year he costs $205,000-ish. That excludes any overtime, which the unions mandate to a degree. If the project is on a 40 hour week, the operator is likely on 50 hours a week. Add about $82,000 a year to account for that. On top of that, in Chicago add about 75% for the cost of an oiler. So...labor cost to have a crane on a one year job in Chicago is about $503k.

[dc_denizen]

Ph.ds/scientists make less than that. although phds should make more; crane operators have to be highly trained and shouldn't make less.

[mhays]

So maybe they get $60/hour in actual wages.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mhays

So maybe they get $60/hour in actual wages.

that's certainly a nice family-providing wage, but a very FAR cry from pulling down half a million a year.

where did crawford pull this $500,000 figure from?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

where did crawford pull this $500,000 figure from?

It isn't unusual for NYC crane operators to make 500k or even more.

This article is from 4 years ago, when the market was much worse, and salaries lower-

Crane Operators Top $500,000 in Pay, Benefits
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...99563008284024

The union pay scale in NYC back in 2011 was $82/hour, and has risen since then.

That compares to $39/hour in similarly high-cost, labor-friendly DC. When you factor all the ridiculous union rules regarding pay, a typical NYC crane operator will make many times more than the average professional in NYC. I still don't understand why this somehow is a victory for the middle class, when the middle class ends up paying for these outrageous salaries.

These aren't even the worst union salaries. The backstage guys at Broadway shows, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall can make even more. Some guys (and they're almost all guys, and get the job through nepotism) can earn close to $1 million with overtime. That's part of the reason why your Broadway tickets are $150 a pop.

[Steely Dan]

^ that's nuts.

fom chris's real world chicago numbers, it sounds like a crane operator in the windy city would be doing well to make $175,000 in wages per year.

not bad money at all, but nowhere near as extreme as half a million bucks.

[llamaorama]

Common sense says OP's argument requires there be some latent demand for housing and commercial space in order for those higher costs to not make growth un-economical, right? If you had a high cost city due to regulations, unions, taxes, etc, but it was not attractive, then nobody would want to live or do business there and it would slowly bleed out.

But cities are also economic engines and when they are on a sustainable path they are naturally concentrations of wealth and power. "Liberals" helped keep cities from losing their charm to creative and professional types in a brief period of history when they were struggling. By staying desirable, people who have money want to move back in. This is considered gentrification, but actually it is a natural process of succession that has gone awry because there is nowhere for the low income population to move on to that has the same level of services they need such as public transit.

Conservatives all want to say they are the team with George Romney who told suburban racists to piss off, and want to say all Liberals were misguided do gooders whose welfare programs caused poverty. Bunch of BS, IMO.

That's revisionist to the extreme. Conservatives were the ones in the suburbs, passing local ordinances to keep out multi-family construction and creating zoning codes to forbid developing affordable neighborhoods. Or moving into privately master planned developments adjacent to concentrated apartment complex ghettos like you see in Southwest Houston.

[chrisvfr800i]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

that's certainly a nice family-providing wage, but a very FAR cry from pulling down half a million a year.

where did crawford pull this $500,000 figure from?

It would take an extreme circumstance of a 60 hour week to get to $375k labor cost for the single operator. (What that guy takes home on his check would be significantly less, but still a handsome figure in the $200k range.)

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by chrisvfr800i

It would take an extreme circumstance of a 60 hour week to get to $375k labor cost for the single operator. (What that guy takes home on his check would be significantly less, but still a handsome figure in the $200k range.)

so that's an extreme case with a crapload of overtime. would it be safe to say that a typical tower crane operator in chicago makes around $150,000 in wages in a typical year?

[chrisvfr800i]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

so that's an extreme case with a crapload of overtime. would it be safe to say that a typical tower crane operator in chicago makes around $150,000 in wages in a typical year?

Wages: $53.75/hr (ST)
Bennies: $30.73/hr

These are published union rates.

[Steely Dan]

^ thanks, that doesn't seem egregious for such a high-skill, high-risk position. lives literally hang in the balance of the crane operator's hands.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by mhays

So maybe they get $60/hour in actual wages.

Yeah, I was going to say. I know for fact there is a discrepancy between what my firm pays temp workers and what they actually earn--we get billed $28/hr for a clerical temp by the agency, but that same temp only actually earns $15/hr. Obviously it's a different setup than what crane operators operate under, but the larger point stands: it's simply ridiculous to conflate an employer's labor costs with any given worker's actual income.