Quote:
Originally Posted by TGRR
Problem is, the union was too stiff-necked to bend the necessary amount when things got tough.
In the end, they - collectively - were dumb, and Adam Smith's "invisible hand" has come along to punish them for their stupidity.
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Here's the thing about unions "bending" though, why don't the friggin' people at the TOP give up something? Because they never do. It's always the workers who have to pay. Unions look out, as much as they can, for their workers. Yes, there was a problem with corruptness in unions some years ago, it probably still exists on some level, and that should be dealt with. But picking on workers who earn a fraction of what the executives at the top make is silly. A few executives earn more than many, many workers. If we really forced corporate America to be more equitable with the profits, the country would be much stronger. When unions "bend" and make concessions that cost their members, when those in power give up nothing, it makes the industry as a whole weaker. When times are hard, EVERYONE should have to give up something, NOT just the unions and the workers.
America was strongest when we had a strong middle class, because the middle class drives the economy. Without a strong middle class, we become much weaker as a country. We screwed ourselves when we allowed corporate America to ship all our manufacturing jobs overseas. A country that makes nothing is not a strong country. A country that has a majority of the people working for very little while a very few at the top own most of the wealth is not a strong country. That description usually refers to third world dictatorships. We are only now seeing the consequences of what has been coming for years, as a result of the actions of those in power. Until we make some serious changes, it will never get better.
But look at China and India. Now that they have our manufacturing base, they are developing a middle and upper middle class economy, and they have grown very strong. (China has even been sending their upper middle class people over here to buy houses.) I have been ranting about this for years, but no one wanted to listen to me, because you know, I'm just a "whacko communist leftie" so of course I must be stupid. But it has been my experience that those on the left tend to look more at long term consequences than those on the right. No offense meant to those on the right, (and of course it doesn't apply to everyone on the right, nor to everyone on the left, maybe it's just people in south Georgia ). And we need to look long term and not be so shortsighted.
GM was certainly shortsighted when they confiscated all those electric cars they built, and then demolished them. WTF? I mean really, couldn't they have just sold them to the people who had been leasing them and wanted to buy them? Why couldn't they have kept that ONE LINE of green cars? Imagine where they would be now. Probably not going completely bankrupt. It certainly wasn't the unions, or the workers, who made THAT genius decision. It was the executives.