You consider even $40/hr. - for some seriously burdensome work (either physically taxing or just mind-numbingly dull and boring and tedious) - to be greedy.
still $41 an hour is ridiculous.
Nurses in South New Jersey start at around $25/hour.
Paramedics make even less...
These are people who save lives - every fucking day.... and New Jersey isn't a "cheap place to live" by any standard.
Fuck the auto companies and fuck their fucking unions. Far too long have they enjoyed protectionist policies. They've grown big, lazy and UNCOMPETITIVE.
This isn't the first time these jackasses have asked to be bailed out at taxpayer expense.
If you are old enough, you will remember the rhetoric we hear today is almost a carbon copy of what was wafting over the airwaves in 1979.
Don't prop up mediocrity
GM (the same GM that has their hand out today) Chairman Thomas Murphy condemned the Chrysler bailout in 1979 as "a basic challenge to the philosophy of America." Jimmy Carter's treasury secretary, William Miller, said the Chrysler bailout "is neither desirable nor appropriate, being contrary to the principle of free enterprise," but said he "recognizes that there is a public interest in sustaining jobs and maintaining a strong and competitive national automotive industry."
I defy you to explain that logic.
OK, spin the clock forward to 2008, and Chrysler is now back for more. And not only are THEY returning, but they are bringing GM and Ford with them. The arguments are all the same, blah-buh-blah ... so the question is mind-bendingly simple: Are we going to make the same mistake again?
Are we going to continue to enable managers and union bosses who have collaborated to create an auto industry that is incapable of producing an attractive product at a reasonable price? The answer, tragically, is probably yes.
The result: The U.S. auto industry will become just another bloated, politicized, semi-governmental blob producing a mediocre product that fewer and fewer people will choose — think Amtrak, Fannie Mae or the Postal Service. And Congress will have created yet another source of temptation for themselves. Expect many more future Duke Cunninghams and Ted Stevenses to go to jail over illegal bribes from auto-industry lobbyists.
What will taxpayers get? A failed U.S. auto industry and more crooks in Congress, really.
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The real crime, IMHO, is against other workers and industries and localities.
Saving 100,000 jobs at Chrysler is obvious; losing 100,000 jobs, one by one around the country is not obvious, but they will nonetheless be lost, should aid to Chrysler pass.
Let me explain why I believe this to be so. If this aid takes the form of loan guarantees rather than direct loans (and, I add parenthetically, that over $1 billion of the New York City loan guarantees has been converted into direct federal loans by the Federal Financing Bank) it will be tantamount to an allocation of credit to Chrysler.
That means that Chrysler will get capital that would have gone to other more efficient and more profitable businesses. Because this capital will be diverted by these loan guarantees to a less efficient business, it is highly probable that more jobs will be lost through invisible unemployment than would be were Chrysler to fail.
I hasten to point out that this will result in all the increased costs to the government that the proponents of the bailout so loudly declare they wish to avoid. Of course, the costs will not all be centered in Michigan; unemployment checks, welfare checks, food stamp benefits will increase nationwide, in big and small towns, urban centers and rural America.
Rather than a few localities suffering noticeably; many will suffer almost invisibly. Workers who have nothing to do with Chrysler will lose their jobs or pay the taxes and higher prices caused by this bailout. The average industrial worker earns half of what the average Chrysler workers earns, and under the UAW contract, the Chrysler workers will be receiving a $500 million pay and benefits rise over the next three years.
I have always thought that businesses in trouble cut costs; the Chrysler workers will receive far more in wage increases alone over the next ten years than this bailout amounts to. That (and other facts) would indicate to me that the Chrysler workers have not made any sacrifices and that they hope, through federal aid, to maintain their relatively high wages at the expense of the lower-paid workers in this country.
We are being asked to shift the burden from the relatively well-off workers at Chrysler to the relatively worse-off workers throughout America. A Chrysler bailout will be a shifting of burdens that should be borne by those involved.
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Naturally, none of the talking head idiots on TV or the blathering morons in Congress (save for the odd sane voices) are talking about this. Nooo! Democrats love to complain about Republican "scare tactics" and "fear mongering" - while they perpetuate more of the same with their incessant nonsensical drivel about how we'll all just shrivel up and die if we didn't do this or that according to DNC diktat.
Fuck 'em all.
If my hospital closed it's doors tomorrow (as many hospitals are around the country), it's
my responsibility to find gainful employment.
As it should be. Yes, it might be management's fault - but again, it doesn't become the "community's fault" to provide for me or my family.
My life is not your concern. Your life is not my problem.
Bailing out failure only encourages more irresponsible behavior. Unless you are held accountable to the consequences of your actions, you'll never learn lessons. Success and failure will lose all meaning and nothing will be worth striving for anymore.
pissed off,
R.
Shouldn't some blame go to the Harvard MBAs and Yale JDs who can't figure out how to lead a company to develop products which the consumer wants? You can trim a couple thousand workers from the ranks but shouldn't we also trim a couple thousand white-collar workers too to balance out the purge? What does the average white collar worker make at GM? More than $70/hr?
