Labor Unions should be abolished.

However, I feel I must make a few opening remarks regarding sourcing, quoting, and plagiarism:Pro's last round had 6 sources. They were:1 - An opinion piece with no facts from which he got his "100 million dollar" example.2 - A letter to the editor of a newspaper that complains about a specific anecdotal example from the 70's.3 - A BBC article on raising British rail ticket prices to pay for infrastructure. As far as I can see it says nothing whatsoever about Pro's argument, nor does it have anything to do with unions.4 - Another opinion piece without factual backing from which he lifted quotes5 - A wikipedia page from which he lifted some quotes6 - An article from which he took at least a whole paragraph, including the example of the "hypothetical" union-less state. Pro quotes verbatim from his sources without ever using quotes to indicate he has done so. Technically, this is plagiarism, though I do hope it was merely an error on Pro's part. Pro did no quoting or inline sourcing at all, so anywhere I say he "took X", he did so without any direct attribution. Pro: Please source appropriately. C/Ping someone else's argument does not make an argument of your own. I urge Pro to make an argument and find sources which support it, rather than trying to take arguments piecemeal from others. On to rebuttals. Pro claims that "It always amazes me that some people just can’t seem to grasp the concept that if you raise costs on businesses the prices they charge consumers for services will go up. "The problem is that it's not that people can't “grasp the concept”. Businesses make profit. When their costs go up, their profits shrink. This only requires them to raise prices if they demand the maintaining of the level of profit. While sometimes it is true that raising costs necessitate the raising or prices, the implication that Pro makes, that every dollar paid must be made up, is simply fallacious. Pro claims that "Unions Caused FedEx Prices to Soar. " As support for this, references the strike in 1997, which, he claims, caused Fedex to raise prices, and uses a 2010 source claiming that “Unions May Cause FedEx Prices to Soar” (emphasis mine). The 1997 strike was UPS[1]. During that time period, Fedex saw increased revenue. Fedex is still not a "union company" [2], However, since that time, UPS has not suffered greatly, and remains a major competition to Fedex. Pro drops my points regarding paying apppropriate wages vs. slavery, and my points regarding CEO pay. I believe that both of these points effectively show that simply decrying "higher wages", and blaming unions for them, is not a valid point. Pro repeats "job losses". He claims that "a state with a 20 percent unionization rate. .. experienced an unemployment rate that was 1.2 percentage points higher than that of a hypothetical state that had no unions" (emphasis mine). That can easily be turned around: A hypothetical state with 100 percent union membership might have had an unemployment rate of 0! We can construct hypotheticals that feed into our preconceived notions all day long. Pro says that Milton Friedman believed unionization and the minimum wage were bad things. Simply repeating Milton's belief is an appeal to authority. Does Pro have any evidence? Pro believes that unions increase unemployment. Does he have any study to back that up? Fundamentally, Pro seems to make a mistake that a lot of people seem to make. Unions do not have magical powers. They are a negotiating unit, negotiating with the company to set wages and working conditions. Companies are not required to pay whatever the union wants. At the same time, unions give a voice to employees who otherwise would have only their individual abilities to bargain with the company. This results in higher wages and more workplace protections. Pro's main argument, and the only one that he maintains in this round, is that unions raise wages, and higher wages lead to higher prices. He asserts this as a prima facie bad thing. The contrast are the German Auto companies, which are quite profitable despite high wages and high levels of unionization. When they come to the US, they locate in right-to-work states, where they can pay less. It doesn't lower the prices of the cars, or hurt the company's competitiveness. They do it because they can. [3] Further, I've already pointed out that slave labor would keep prices low, too, but that would obviously not be a good. The economy is influenced by more than how much profits line the pockets of corporations. I would agree that unreasonably high wages are a bad thing. But Pro has not shown that Unions cause unreasonably high wages. I have shown that CEO pay has risen explosively compared to average worker pay; this is why CEOs are a much bigger problem than unions. Over to Pro. [1] - . http://www.pbs.org...[2] - . http://www.changefedextowin.org...[3] - . http://www.remappingdebate.org...