Talk about not making any sense, are you replying to my post, or did you mean to start a new thread?
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Talk about not making any sense, are you replying to my post, or did you mean to start a new thread?
I did reply to your post. You contended that in order to be economically competitive, we need to reduce our labor costs. I pointed out that the top exporting nations in the world all have high wages AND government-subsidized health insurance. The two exceptions are China [[low wages) and the United States [[no health insurance). Thus, your claim is just more of the same propagandistic bullshit we've allowed our masters to trick us into believing.
To wit, we are still the third-largest exporting nation in the world. That seems pretty competitive, if you ask me.
Give me a well-paid worker who takes pride in assembling a quality product over some barely literate child from the Third World.
Quote: "yeah, the D would be in great shape if auto workers justdid their jobs for free!"
You're just windmill punching, I didn't say work for free. Work for a wage in line with a more competitive "global" scale. Like it or not, until our government does something about all the cheap junk coming in, that is what it is going to take for US manufacturing companies to survive. It's simple math.
Quote: "Thus, your claim is just more of the same propagandistic bullshit we've allowed our masters to trick us into believing."
All these businesses filing bankruptcy and going out of business, is that propaganda too? You hit the nail on the head with the term "believing". Few people"believes" the economy is in the state it's in. Many think we're just in some normal slump and we are going to magically borrow our way out. You couldn't be more wrong.
Are you asserting that every business filing for bankruptcy protection had a rock-solid business plan? Not one of them made risky investments? They all had realistic projections about their revenues, expenses, and profit margins? Not one company in bankruptcy ever tried to make a buck off hucksterism or creative accounting?
We're most definitely NOT in a normal slump, which is all the more reason to make permanent and lasting reforms such as improved regulation of the financial sector, reforming health care so our companies can compete on the global market, and spurring investment in industries that have a real future. We can't have an economy based on money manipulation and selling suburban houses to each other and expect it to rain dollars.
All valid and well reasoned, but you're not going to do it paying laborers 30 bucks an hour.
Quote: "Are you asserting that every business filing for bankruptcy protection had a rock-solid business plan? "
No, I'm asserting and have been, companies simply can't compete with third world labor rates. Seriously, if you know of a way a US company can produce an equal quality product for the same retail cost as the Chinese at present US wages, you're sitting on a gold mine. Hell I know of some manufactured aluminum goods coming in from China, we can't even buy the raw material for what they are selling for.
The majority of US manufacturers have been in survival mode for years, chopping quality [[cheapening) their product, to afford labor, and the consumer turns around and beats them over the head with it. This isn't about poor management. [[There we go with that big bad evil company garbage again). This is about companies trying to compete in a very unfair market. Due to the trade policies, the thrust has been for most, outsource or die. This is all just common sense, and I'm amazed it needs to be explained.
For the low end labor, domestic labor costs can't compete...but that is good, low end jobs go to those who desire them. Above this, absent organized labor, we absolutely can compete. Will it be the 100 dollar an hour union assembly job with no education prerequisites and no real incentive to produce? No...that too is a good thing.
Oh, and Sstashmoo, in point of fact before the boom of the 40's and 50's and the expansion of the middle class--largely due to the unions--the majority of folks in the US did live in apartments or other rental housing. Home ownership really started to rise as a percentage of the housing market only during the 50's and 60's.
Look it up.
Add benefits and tenure, and this was not an uncommon wage. Regardless, the number is not the crucial point, call it 80, or 60...the principle still holds.
yet another supremely moronic comment. You think people working minimum wage McJobs desire them? no, they take them because they have no other option because good jobs just don't exist. hell, I know engineers who have taken WalMart wages because their jobs got shipped to india, and you think they desired those jobs?
Quote: "Oh, and Sstashmoo, in point of fact before the boom of the 40's and 50's and the expansion of the middle class--largely due to the unions--"
Did the golden era of the industrial revolution have anything to do with it? I'm not convinced everyone primarily lived in an apartment before labor unions came around. Sure are a lot of houses around here and everywhere else built before the years you point to. Who lived in those houses? I think you may be confusing the depression era economy and recovery with the introduction of labor unions.
Whatever the real answer, no model exists to support them now. Used to be Indians around here too.
Quote: "actually, the rise of unions IS tied to the recovery from the 1930s depression,"
The recovery was from three things, US currency devaluation - gold inflow and ww2 defense spending.
vastly oversimplified and just plain wrong
Quote: "vastly oversimplified"
I was just trying to keep it simple for you. :)
How increased labor costs helped businesses is a real mystery. Can you explain this phenomenon? Anyone that signs the front of a check would laugh at that notion.
Quote: "vastly oversimplified and just plain wrong"
A very batsonian reply by the way.
ask Henry Ford. more people with higher wages = more consumers. that is simple math. for the last 30 years we have been working on a "more people with lower wages" model. that clearly hasn't worked
yeah, I guess it was.Quote:
Quote: "vastly oversimplified and just plain wrong"
A very batsonian reply by the way.
Unfortunately, the conservatives who buy into the view that corporations are pure good and the workers are the root of all evil don't seem to take that little fact into account.
When everybody is working at minimum wage jobs, who will buy big ticket items like cars, houses, etc?
Quote: "more people with higher wages = more consumers."
I was afraid you were going to say that and you may be right. But only partly right.
Quote: "When everybody is working at minimum wage jobs, who will buy big ticket items like cars, houses, etc? "
There wouldn't be any big ticket items. There would only be items that everyone could afford. We have big ticket items because people with high wages are driving up costs and paying inflated prices. Ford realized this and why he understood the importance in making cars affordable, what much of their success can be attributed to today. Reference Packard and many other high priced offerings that went under. There has always been a contrast in labor rates and the non-union employees have had a hard time matching the purchasing power of their union counterparts. Price is controlled by consumers, not the other way around. If a product is not selling, the price is dropped, if it cannot be, it's cut from the inventory.
You of the pro-union ilk fail to realize, if everyone in the country made the same wage as you, your purchasing power would be greatly diminished. It's only good because you make more than so many others. So in that context, unions are a bit of an aristocracy. You're all for unions, but I'll wager that deep down, not for everybody.
Everybody will not be working at minimum wage, not in a market based economy...bigger risk, bigger innovations equals bigger rewards.