Nobody Wins at Leapfrog

For more than a century the economic thinking not only of the public, but of the majority of economists, has been dominated by a myth —the myth that the labor unions have been on the whole a highly benevolent institution, and have raised the level of real wages far above what it would have been without union agitation.

Yet the blunt truth is that labor unions cannot raise the real wages of all workers. We may go further: The actual policies that labor unions have systematically followed from the beginning of their existence have, in fact, reduced the real wages of the workers as a whole below what they otherwise would have been. Labor unions are today the chief antilabor force.

HH

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Henry Hazlitt

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For more than a century the economic thinking not only of the public, but of the majority of economists, has been dominated by a myth —the myth that the labor unions have been on the whole a highly benevolent institution, and have raised the level of real wages far above what it would have been without union agitation.

Yet the blunt truth is that labor unions cannot raise the real wages of all workers. We may go further: The actual policies that labor unions have systematically followed from the beginning of their existence have, in fact, reduced the real wages of the workers as a whole below what they otherwise would have been. Labor unions are today the chief antilabor force.