Traders that never have or never will make any money in the trading game (YOU know who YOU are) come to ET and other forums to bitch. They bitch about the methods used by others because they always will believe in their failed methods to the bitter last dollar. They bitch about the winners because as losers they can not comprehend what the winners are trying to tell them what works and are attempting to help the losers. Face the truth, look in a mirror, you are a loser for a reason, you were not born a loser you DEVELOPED that on your own. Losers are easy to spot in life because they are either vindictive to or hateful toward the winners. Winners love winners, losers hate winners. Misery loves company life displays that trait over and over as we travel on. GM and Ford were winners for many a decade. American auto companys basically controlled the worlds auto mkt after WW11 because taking out Hitler and the fucked up nazi's along with tojo never surrender for the emperor (who saved his own ass when it became obvious all the fools that gave their life for him were just another form of losers). After the war America was king shit, BIG dog on the block. Unions were formed before the war in auto industry, those same union employees built the planes, built the tanks, etc, etc. After the war those same unions built great cars that sold like hotcakes because there were jobs for everyone, there were jobs that paid livable wages and paid bennies to allow regular factory workers to send their kids to great colleges so the sons and daughters did not need to work in a sweat shop. Unions workers made the middle class after the war, we were the envy of the world as the American family was really cool. Just like the losing traders that have a hard-on about the winners the people that are against the other guy making a good wage and benifits from a union are just showing how greedy and narrow minded they are. Being against good wages is being against the American way of life, it is being more fascist in thinking than the losers even imagine. To take away from others so one can have more is braindead thinking. Unions change, companies change. many today have only a view of the unions from the 1960's and that view is wrong and stupid. The whole banking system has blown up in front of every ones eyes and all they see is the "unions fault". They see wrong hyped numbers such as 70 an hour compared to 35. They fail to dive into the numbers and see that japan, germany have health care from the government and in America we do not, GEE, nice to have a union that cares about YOUR children when the gov cares less. The 70 to 35 is a myth when the wages are investigated. Some changes are going to happen, believe it. But to blame everything on the unions is being moronic. The hearings show the republicans are against helping Americas auto companies because republicans are against fair wages and benifits. The Senate, house members from Alabama etc are against money for the UNIONS survival as they see the situation, they fail to see beyond that. How many so called republicans went to college because their parents were members of a union? How many parents are ashamed to admit they wasted their money on the kids education when they discovered they spend the union wages on a brat that grew up a greedy snot nosed wet behind the ears snot they cares less about their fellow citizens and only care about themselves? ....DONE____ I could go on and on, but you losers know who you are. greedy pissants.
You do not have the right to make $70 an hour pushing a broom, free healthcare and 90% of your wages for sitting on your fat ass if your plant closes. It's greedy unions that want promotions and raises based on length of service, not merit. It's unskilled and uneducated UAW members who insist that technological advances be ignored so that "jobs can be saved". It's quite literally extortion by organized crime backed up by lazy, greedy, scumsucking parasites that killed the auto industry. It is socialism in it's purest sense. That's very much unAmerican. It's no skin off my back if somebody makes a great wage doing a crappy job as long as I don't have to pay for it. But the automakers are now asking me to pony up some coin. Even if the UAW was the finest model of capitalism known to man, I would still be against the bailouts. Even if autoworkers made two bucks an hour, I would oppose giving taxpayer money to failed businesses. I wouldn't bitch about the UAW in that case, but something else the company messed up on. The point is, the automakers have a failed business model. Let em die or reorg or merge or new companies emerge. Any bailouts only extend the process and cost more taxpayer money.
We need to get one thing straight. There isn't any union employee making 70 bucks an hour. The composite rate of 73 bucks an hour is what it costs GM to produce a car. That includes wages and ALL other benefits. Yes, some of those benefits are ridiculous. Receiving near full pay for sitting an home would be an example of that. Getting your heath care picked up just because you want to retire early would be another. If a person chooses to retire early, then it's their problem to pay for their own health care. Simply eliminating these two absurd benefits would save the company billions. Your best point is that none of this should come at the expense of the taxpayer. If a working man can get great pay and benefits, more power to him. However, should that company fall on hard times it ain't my problem. The rub here is some of these hard times have been created by the banks and now all kinds of businesses are suffering. To give money to the ones that orchestrated this credit crisis and then not help those businesses that suffer as a consequence is beyond unfair. I would call it criminal. When the government decided to open up the cash window to the crooks at the bank, they/we also took on the responsibility to help everyone else. One more thing, not nessecarilly directed at you. For people to say that some bank is too big to fail, and then say to hell with the auto makers is more than a little naive. Any one of the auto makers goes down, let alone all three...well lets just say, hard times would be upon us, all of us.
That is the entire problem. Once you start saying that some business or some industry needs to be supported by the taxpayer, how do you stop? How to you close this box belonging to Pandora? Once companies can loot the treasury, they'll spend resources trying to rob taxpayers and take unwise risks. They'll be buying senators right and left. We cracked that box open when we bailed out that guy with the funny last name and Chrysler. But we shut it right away. Now however, it's wide open and suits are flying in from all over with tin cups. We really fucked up this time.
I don't know... for an autoworker to make more than an ironworker is beyond me. We risk our lives on a daily basis doing work that is extremely labor intensive out in the elements. Although I'm now on the other side of it (contractor), I still keep my book. The going rate is a TOTAL PACKAGE of $55.00 per man hour. No work-no pay. It's insulting to me that an assembly line worker is even near my wage rate. Fom the employer end of it, by the time I add in workman's comp, GL insurance, overhead, etc... I have to bid jobs @ north of $100.00 per man hour. FWIW. What dictates that my job be worth more pay than the UAW? Seems like common sense to me although I'm obviously biased. I've seen their working conditions on the discovery channel and was quite impressed. To have the entire frame of the car rotated for the MIG welder so as not to induce fatigue by him having to bend his back past a certain degree, left me thinking about our welders... hanging off a float on the perimeter 40 stories up buffeted by 30 mph winds... and made me jealous.
Nobody wants to talk about the stare-you-in-the-face reason these auto companies can't compete: They embraced the Marxist doctrines which now dominate US political and corporate culture. From June 4, 2001: http://www.vdare.com/francis/color_blind.htm Ford was trading at $24 when the article was written. Seems their embracement of diversity hasn't worked out too well.
Ever hear of a post hoc argument? So Ford's problems could be solved if they kept all the whites and hired all the rest? LOL.
I'm not saying ban them. I'm saying remove their Legal Force. There is no reason why a collection of workers should be afforded extra-judicial rights above the individual worker or company. If Workers want to voluntarily organize themselves to have more efficient representation in larger companies, thats fine. Thats their Constitutional Right. But when GOVERNMENTS appoint Unions extra-legal power and make them the single negotiating authority - outlawing scabs or non-unionized replacements - free market economics cease to exist. Negotiations become one-sided and all sorts of distortions in pay, pensions and vacation result = company and public get fucked. If GM or Chrysler had the option to replace UAW's with non-unionized bolt tighteners, think they'd be going under now? Nope. Wages would be commensurate with market rates (25$, maybe), profitability way higher, etc etc. It doesn't solve shitty management, but thats another story. There's some good that will come from these bankruptcies. Hopefully, we'll get some Union Labor Reform and Management will get scared straight.
Free market economics? You might want to study monopoly theory. Unions act as a counter weight to a monopolistic company in the labor market. When it comes to low skilled labor, because of their great quantity, you can pay them LESS than they are worth by exploiting your position, it's all about negotiation. There's no such thing as the free market, I don't know if you looked out the window but we live in a complex world. Big 3? Yes, big 3, not big 50. That means if you don't like the low wage Ford or GM offers you, you better hope Chrysler will offer you a higher wage(not). Business will exploit their position of power, THAT is the rule of the market. Unions only tilt back the balance of power to make it more fair for the worker. Workers don't compete against themselves for the lowest wage anymore and they can receive a FAIR wage. I say fair wage, because they know if they price themselves too high there would be no demand. Overtime it's true unions might get too much power, and the systems needs to be rebalanced. And that is what bankruptcy protection does, it allows contracts to be renegociated, whether it's an strangling supplier or a union, they all know that if they abuse their power they won't earn a cent anymore. Some of the people here are pathetic, if business ever goes too far then give them a second chance they were playing the capitalist system but if EVER unions go to far, take their rights away forever. Please, do people even notice the double standards they adhere to? The media doesn't brainwash people just by saying lies, it also brainwashes people by omitting facts. Again, if you are going to throw around terms like free market, learn the first thing about economics then.
I hope we all can agree on this little fact: The 'New World Order' was and remains a race to the bottom, as multinational corporations can search high and low for the very cheapest labor, cheapest places to pollute, easiest governments to 'turn' (ie 'corrupt'), and fewest regulations of every type that would add costs to their business model. The world is a vampire... I've always maintained that when humans are viewed as mere commodities, and our ethos is so low that it does not allow for the introduction of dignity attached to human lives, even if it increases the costs of production, we will see the darkest episodes of human behavior. It's happened many times before, and it will happen many times again into the future, where human beings are regarded as low as inanimate tools of production. Good luck. Every man for themselves when you're just a cog in the globalist machine. If you have high demand, hard to replace skills the machine lusts after, you're set - if not, you and your family will be tossed aside and shredded. 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' Part I: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yTbdnNgqfs8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yTbdnNgqfs8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Part II: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/29GhXsx7-Rs&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/29GhXsx7-Rs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>