When discussing the immobility of labour in the car manufacturer sense, I think that is what is called "Frictionally Unemployed" meaning that although you lost your job due to market factors, you need not worry since your skill set is highly sought after and you will soon find another job. "Structurally Unemployed" is the term of endearment given to those who lack the skill set necessary to gain employment. We used the example of the Buggy driver circa 1910-1920. Horses were being phased out by technology, and the buggy drivers needed to compensate. How many Ferriers do you know today? Me, I know three, but I am a little nuts.
Well, I had to study Marx and Weber "Pronounced 'Vay-ber' for extra credit in class" but haven't brushed the dust off of them in quite a while I admit.
In the long-run, labour is mobile.
In the long-run, We will all be dead.
I can go to the US and work. I have the necessary skill set that the US economy is looking for. I get a work Visa, move down there, and voila! I'm working. There is no Iron Curtain, no Berlin Wall. Are we talking about the same thing? People make the choice to not move. Economics can study that choice. In the microeconomic context, maybe labour is fixed or frictional; in the macroeconomic sense it rarely is. As one of the three main factors of production, labour is often held constant to simplify the capital usage / production function. Lazy? Sort of. True? Rarely.
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Originally Posted by smooth
All this is to say that when people argue unions are artificial constraints or pressures on the market, such a statement completely ignores the political/legal realities that our labor market is no where near approximating a freely operating beast in the ways that Adam Smith wrote about. I reference Smith again because free-market proponents, in the US at least, speak of his work as their bible, yet they ignore the other half of the equation he laid out--free mobility of labor.
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I think you and I ARE saying the same thing. I also think that people ignore realities. I believe that the beast is pretty close to what ol' man Smith was talking about.
Labour is free to move. From one job to another within an industry, from one industry to another within the same skill set, and from one physical location to another, whether that be domestically or internationally.
I am not saying it is easy or universal, but there is mobility. Noone is a prisoner to their location, their work or thier industry.