Forgot to address collective bargaining. I agree that unions and collective bargaining are a means to an end. But I completely disagree with the idea of a closed shop. I should not be forced to join a union in order to screw bolts onto a car or put handles on widgets. At one point in the 70s the total cost of a Detroit auto-worker to the company was somewhere around $30 an hour. Is doing a job a robot does cheaper and better actually worth $30 and hour? The net result of all that collective, closed-shop bargaining was the export of tens of thousands of jobs to other countries. Same thing happened to the U.S. steel industry.

On the one hand you say that those who don't get a HS diploma or further education are their own worst enemy. Doesn't that imply a laissez-faire approach to wage economics? Without the diploma you are at the mercy of market forces. If what you can do is only worth $5 and hour then go get some education. OTOH, closed shop bargaining is anything but laissez-faire. Though in my dealings with the telecom unions I must say there was a lot of lazy and not a lot of fair.

Whether it's a union or the government, artifical wage controls do little except price the labor force out of the international market. Once that happens the only cure is restrictive trade practices. The argument that illegal immigration and lower wages on the bottom rungs of the employment ladder actually benefits us in the form of lower prices for consumer goods only works in a free-trade environment. Once factories in China or Indonesia are producing DVD players for less than $30, sales of U.S. made machines will drop. U.S. companies, whose labor costs are dictated by collective bargaining agreements, cannot compete and either outsource their labor or go out of business. So what's better - a factory full of people making $10 an hour, or abandoned rust-belt factories?