so obama has finally annoyed me - this whole gm thing. bad enough the government owns a private business - couldn't we own a business that didn't suck. what the hell did they do with that gigantic chuck of cash we *just* gave them. and yes, bush set this in motion but obama could have refused to have nothing to do with it but nooooooo
now, one problem that he inherited that there wasn't much he could do about at least not immeditaely is iraq. and we could really use those troops to go after that fucking nutcase in korea that we should have gone after years ago.
where are our floating cars and our transporting machines? just asking.
i sincerely haven't a clue how i might go about meeting my obligations this week. i need a bail out.
7 comments:
Macroeconomics and microeconomics are entirely different things. GM was badly managed, as was Chrysler. That does not mean that the workers on the line deserve to lose their homes, or that their children deserve to go without college.
It's a huge mess, and it had to be cleaned up by someone, somehow. Obama is trying to fix this as efficiently and as quickly as possible. He is not going to win friends in the process.
If all goes well, we will all be driving well-built cars that get seventy miles to the gallon by the middle of the next decade. I, for one, am hoping that he pulls it off.
first let me say - i hope he pulls it off too but only because we are already stuck in it.
do they deserve that no - but you know what; the newspaper industry is folding like a mofo. those people deserve to lose everything? the construction industry - hardly a job to be had. how 'bout them? they deserve it any more? we can not bail everyone out and i do not see a reason that the workers of gm and chrysler are more deserving than the labor union or the newspaper guild. hell, the newspapers would be first on my list.
also, there is nothing saying they *would* be unemployed. they might have to work for honda or toyota or audi or whatever and make less than 80$ an hour but i'm not entirely convince that 80/hour is fair market value for an assembly line anyway. (the above of 80/hr is inclusive of benefits and pension plans, car stipends etc.
i still disagree that it has to be cleaned up by someone. this is a free market society. but fine - if this has to be cleaned up then bring on the full socialism. cuz if i'm gonna pay for private industry's mess then i want my damned free health care.
as for me- i know i will be driving a well built 70mph car by next decade cuz i'll be driving a honda.
Yay Honda!!!!
I agree w Cassie - one employee does not deserve to be helped more than another based on industry.
No, we can't bail everyone out, that is certainly true. However, the construction business consumes capital resources, as does the newspaper business. The auto industry converts capital resources into a durable good, automobiles.
Moreover, newspaper reporters do not lose their skills, the ability to report, when they lose their jobs, and with the internet, they can make a stab at being free-lance reporters. It's scary, but it can be done, and is happening.
Construction workers are accustomed to boom and bust cycles. It is the nature of the industry, and people accustomed to the lifestyle will find other ways to make ends meet... hopefully.
Auto workers aren't in nearly as optimistic a place as members of other industries. Moreover, people outside of auto industries hold onto out of date factoids like 80 dollar an hour wages plus benefits.
GM ratified a contract last year with the UAW that was 47 dollars an hour wages plus benefits, which was five dollars above Honda workers in non-union states. before GM's declaration of bankruptcy, UAW members approved a contract that brought wages into parity with their "foreign" competitors.
Any way, because of the huge capital costs associated with automotive manufacturing, and because of the not-yet-free world market, GM and Chrysler failed to compete against corporations subsidized by their home governments and made crappy cars that disillusioned two generations of domestic auto buyers. I get it. GM and Chrysler failed due to their own incompetence and an unfair business model. But hey, Americans are being paid well in Tennessee making good cars, so it's not all bad, right?
I don't want to live in Tennessee. You like living in Massachusetts.
As for your rant about socialism and "free" healthcare, TINSTAAFL. We already have universal healthcare. We just have not admitted it to ourselves, and we are paying for that delusion. Eventually this will all get worked out, and we will all still piss and moan about how hypocritical we all are.
Many of your statements and self presentations are hypocritical which bothers me a bit but far, far less than your emotional style of debate, which is what I suppose leads you to be so very rude. I don’t like to argue that way. I don’t see a need to insult. Perhaps you have mistaken my not attacking you for being too weak to do so or maybe you just think bullying is winning. So perhaps, in this post, I think I might indulge in a little of it since time and time again you have not afforded me the courtesy of manners. I will try to stick mostly to facts though.
First you say there is no such thing as a free lunch, and in the very next sentence you say we have universal healthcare. The two sentences after that I haven’t a clue what you are even talking about. So, I’ll stick to the first two.
Apparently, there DO BE in fact a free lunch, and GM is chowing down on that mofo. THAT is hypocrisy. You advocate handing money out to GM because their workers’ children might not be able to go to college (oh, and you better believe I’m coming back for that estrogen tidbit) and then try bitch slapping me for looking for a free lunch. You have the wrong bitch here my friend – I am actually okay with the idea of socialism. Switzerlandize my ass. It is this current oligarchy bullshit that runs up my ass sideways.
As to our universal healthcare, I am psyched to find out we have cuz I can stop paying my $160 a month for that shit. There is no universal healthcare. There is critical care, you are correct about that. Let me illustrate the difference – if I didn’t have healthcare I paid for they would have cut off my leg. That is NOT an exaggeration. They talked about cutting it off anyway – it would have been the most direct way to save my life and stop the infection. Because I had healthcare we went through nearly 2 years of other alternatives. I pray it doesn’t happen to you or yours but you truly haven’t a clue what you are talking about. Check the statistics about how many people have lost everything because they didn’t have healthcare or even adequate healthcare. Then check the statistics on how many of them live in Michigan – maybe if a sufficient number of them are your friends and neighbors you might give a fuck.
Better yet, ask the UAW to drop their healthcare, including pension care. That will cut their pay by quite a bit and allow a greater budget to keep more jobs. Just tell ‘em they already have healthcare.
I actually am not that attached to Massachusetts – don’t speak for me. And I can promise you that if there was no work for me here I would move my ass because I signed up to live in a free market society. You know where I would LOVE to live – Hawaii. I bet a lot of people would so the government should create and / or relocate a lot of jobs to Hawaii so all of us who live there can go.
Honda is not subsidized by their government. There is a complicated conversation to be had about the way that they have fluctuated the value of the yen and the advantage that that might present (notice how I can be honest even when it doesn’t serve to prove my argument). However, as I have pointed out to you before our country already assists American car companies – we enforce ‘buy American’. Also, when the big three were trying to push our patriotic buttons they pointed out that they produced in great volume for the military. Well, Japan doesn’t have an active military. Oh, and our military, they don’t pay wholesale. So if we do talk about the yen issue then we need weigh it against the money the big three gets from the government.
But all of that is meaningless anyway because most Americans WANT to buy American and if the big three had offered us anything worth buying . . . . we . . . would . .. have . . . *bought* . . . it. Hell, I’m a pinko socialist and I WANT to buy American but I can’t afford to, maybe I could if I was UAW.
Your 47 dollars is probably right because you said “without benefits” – if you had responded to what I actually said and not tried to bastardize it into a point you could easily argue you would have notice I said “(the above of 80/hr is inclusive of benefits and pension plans, car stipends etc.)”. But okay – 47 – still not sure that I see why assembly line work is worth 47$/hour. I’m open though – show me why. Seriously, convince me that that is a reasonable salary. I don’t see it. The median income in the United States is 43k / year – less than half of the UAW. The median teacher’s salary in the US – 42k/year. The average teacher’s salary in Michigan is about 55k.
I know your view is extraordinarily myopic but look around no industry is in a great position right now. And if we had gotten rid of the big three – the others would have expanded or who knows maybe a small company would start up. Isn’t that the way this whole free market thing is supposed to work?
So construction – you just hope they make. Hey, that’s my industry – so I guess my child doesn’t deserve the same opportunities and I deserve to lose everything.
You know how construction workers survive – they MOVE. They go where the work is. I have known guys who moved more than 4 times in ONE year. And yes, they are accustomed to booms and busts - and they follow the booms. One problem – there are no booms to follow around now. But fuck them, right? They don’t live in Michigan. People in all the other states have to be responsible for themselves.
Now, about newspaper reporters – let me get this straight – UAWs shouldn’t have to go work for less money and smaller benefits but reporters should be just fine with the idea of not only losing some money but possibly all their money. They should not only learn freelancing but also learning to be entrepreneurs and market themselves. Being a good writer does not make you an entrepreneur. Also, you do know that there are workers who run the printing presses and all those people who deliver the papers – what is your business plan for them? In fact there are 244,000 printing press operators in the US. And unlike the auto industry there aren’t companies waiting to absorb them - - even in Tennessee – the industry is just failing.
Now to your second statement – “However, the construction business consumes capital resources, as does the newspaper business. The auto industry converts capital resources into a durable good, automobiles.”
1. The construction industry consumes resources while the auto industry converts them? Are you serious? So the construction industry just eats steel and bridges are made out of dreams and fluffy bunnies.
2. I suppose you are right about newspapers but you can’t convince me that newspapers aren’t necessary. But fine, you win – newspapers are a drain on society which is why reporters children don’t deserve opportunity and all those effers who run the printing presses well come on did anyone even think their kids would go to college? Hmm, you know, those who run the printing presses, they weren’t used to instability either – things have been pretty stable since the late 20s.
3. I would like to say this about UAW’s children going to college – in this country college is not a right, nor an assumption. Now, if you want to talk about whether it should be or not okay. But don’t back up your idea that we should protect UAW so their kids should get to go to college. Why do they have any more right to that than anyone else. I mean really, “to go without college”??? Also, a personal opinion, if I saw my parent making 98k a year (that’s using your 47/hour) with benefits there is no way I would go to college. Hell, if I had known I could move to Detroit and make that I wouldn’t have gone to college. I’m 15 years out and I’m still not making that.
4. The auto industry might convert capital resources into a good, durable vehicle but the big three didn’t which is kinda the point?
So, if you agree that not everyone deserves to be bailed out then what is your criteria? I really hope you have an answer that goes beyond “cuz it’s my state”.
Now put all that aside for just a second Obama does not know crap about running a car company. Just saying.
Some other stuff:
Out of GM’s 252,000 workers – 152,000 of them are working in other countries.
Everyone likes to say that the big three used to thrive but they don’t seem to point out that before the late 80s they had almost no competition.
There is a good argument to be made for the fact that the UAW is exactly what crippled the big three. Either way, what everyone fails to understand is that declaring bankruptcy gives GM the opening to break its contracts with the unions. I’ll be shocked if they don’t.
If you think this is a good idea then you pay for my share. After all, it’s an investment, right? You’ll get it back. When the government recoups all that money and shares it with us – I’ll give you my share, I promise, I’ll put that in writing. Because there is noooooooo way we are going to see a dime. Even if GM is able to turn itself around and that is a big if, they are first going to take more money from us, and then we are going to sell off the stock before it turns around.
The Canadian government also owns part of GM.
Your blog is littered with pedantic statements about how people should be completely responsible for themselves. As well as plenty of flag bearing for the libertarian party, I know – small ‘l” libertarian but here’s their statement on the subject.
http://www.lp.org/issues/current-issues
http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/statement-on-general-motors-bankruptcy-filing
I get how you feel about this and I sympathize. But either acknowledge that these are feelings or leave them out of what is supposed to be a logical debate. And if you can’t do either of these things – you best figure out how to be more civil. I held back quite a bit here because I don’t think you intend malice (and because you are Kim’s boyfriend). But ultimately it is what you do and not what you intend. Well, at least that’s how it used to be . . .
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