Is this the last post of 2008?

Countries don’t become prosperous by having extremely low wages. Countries have low wages because they’re poor. Countries prosper by having reasonable quality infrastructure and a reasonably healthy and well-educated population. Unions can neither magically create wealth out of thin air, but neither can they magically destroy wealth. What they can do is influence at the margin the way wealth is distributed — a bit more to the workforce and somewhat less to the managers and the shareholders. That’s why people who represent the interests of managers and shareholders don’t like them. It’s a perfectly understandable sentiment, but not one that the broader public should find persuasive. |Yglesias|