Absolutely, supply and demand.
If you don't have any rare or valuable skills, why should you demand a high wage?
That analogy doesn't work, because neither poker player has to place their bet.
In the job market, the employer has to have that role filled, otherwise they wouldn't be advertising for it, and the applicant clearly needs a job. Walking away without an agreement is no good for either of them.
I'm not inclined to reward stupidity or ignorance and neither should any valid system.
I'm not sure what world you're imagining where employers are interviewing or advertising for roles that they don't need to fill. If they don't fill those roles, the work doesn't get done.
All unions do is put a finger on what was a balanced scale.
That has no effect on the price of labour in an unsullied market. Employees will do what they can to benefit them, remember.
There are no economies anything like mine because governments always meddle. It's in the nature of those who aim for public office to do something - often doing anything (even something bad) seems preferable to them than just allowing the forces to do their work.
And there's more chance of me seeing Jesus tugging off Muhammed on a unicorn riding through Narnia than there is of finding a British trade union that tries to keep wage inflation down. Whilst the German trades union model isn't entirely as idyllic as the picture you paint, they're far, far better than British ones. The main reason IMO being the people that run them. German trades union are run by middle class businessmen who are capable of coherent speech and acting like gentlemen. They can sit at a boardroom table and discuss, intelligently, the points in hand and come to reasonable agreements. Contrast that with violent, angry, working class heroes in this country who often would rather spit at a man in a suit than negotiate money from him.
