The Return Of The Giant Sucking Sound

SFGATE.com (The SF Chronicle) ^ | 02/09/04 | Adam Sparks

[sfwarrior]

Since 2001, the United States has lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. Hello! Is anybody listening? This is a crisis. Our house is on fire, and few in Congress are paying attention. And, at the rate things are going, the only jobs even college graduates will be able to get will be in the service industry. That's political lingo for flipping hamburgers.

[Veracious Poet]

"The fact free traders want us to forget!"

Hilarious how the sheeple will never understand such simple things as this...

What the Federal Reserve Act actually was is hardly spoken by a patriot, i.e. tyrannical treason.

[riri]

Why do you begrudge these people their pay?

It is quite bizarre actually. Anything over, say, $7.00 an hour is some obscene amount of money that no one is worthy of. If they hear someone makes $20 an hour it's union thuggery. Never mind that $20 an hour amounts to 40,000 a year. Try living on that.

[A. Pole]

Why do you begrudge these people their pay? It sounds as if you have a personal stake in this? If a CEO wanted millions to run a company would you despise them as well?

Of cource he would not. He thinks that it is as abominable for a worker to make above 30K as for a CEO to make less than 1M. Peons should know their place! Welcome to the Latin American oligarchy.

[Jack Black]

Yes, but unions helped to build the middle class we are now trying to protect. Without them we might be like Mexico, lots of factory jobs but no prosperity, not even for the factory workers. There are not independent trade unions in Mexico. Arguably the failure of Nafta is in part because we did not insist on the export of the unions with the jobs. That at least would have helped NAFTA accomplish its goal of lifing up Mexico, and perhaps helped stem the invasion of poor Mexicans. We did not, it did not and they are still coming.

[Sofa King]

You have, once again, failed to demonstrate any ability to respond to the content of my post. If my post is so absurd, then why can you not offer a refutation?

The answer, of course, is that you have neither the intelligence nor the temperament. You wouldn't know something that is worth listening to if it ran you over in the street.

[Jack Black]

Suggest you look into the Depression again. Much more to do with bad Fed policies than with tariffs. This is an old saw that doesn't cut anymore.

[Biblebelter]

Not so much protecting,they are simply holding office. They have reverted to a party which has lost all purpose of moving the country forward, you see they feel they would put their offices at risk if they exercised bold leadership. Eventually, they will be lose the branches that they hold not because they moved too fast, but because the electorate grew weary. Weary not because of a lack of effectiveness, but the electorate grew weary of the style and are willing to put in another set of tired faces and tired ideas which by relative comparison look better than what they have. Political power should be used, not just held, in that regard the major parties differ little.

[reluctantwarrior]

Throughout this entire thread this is the only person that gave the solution BUY American BUY AMERICAN BUY AMERICAN

[eskimo]

If you can't understand a darn word they're saying, how in the hell can you know if they're being rude or not?

Rude in any language is pretty much apparent.

[jpsb]

The free trade mantra that you label me with isn't a conservative or liberal dogma rather that wages like other inputs find equilibrium in the system

Unfortunately this is not true. Large middle classes are a fairly recent almost uniquely American invention. Most of the history of mankind on this earth is a history of two tier societies. The small ruling class rich and the much larger peasant class. True, most did have a profession middle class but it also was quite small when compared to the huge numbers of dirt poor.

So your statement demonstrably false. The American middle class, was made by government policies and unions in the latter half of the 1800's. Today we are undoing all of that good work for the benefit of those that would be our masters in their New World Order.

Making labor a global commodity that always go to the lower bidder will kill the American middle class and the great American Republic. Personally I don't think the people of this nation will stand of it, and will take matters in to their own hands soon enough by supporting an new political party. If ever the time was ripe for a new political party it is now.

[Hank Rearden]

Why do you begrudge these people their pay?

Because the work they do isn't worth the pay they've extorted through their union, and raises the cost of everything for all Americans.

Because anybody can, and should, have the opportunity to compete for their union-enshrined jobs.

Because they aren't competing, they're extorting.

Unions must die.

[riri]

Well, if we don't get off our arses we are soon going to have the Mencha and Atzlan parties to contend with and with them a huge 30 million+ strong voting block.

[kittymyrib]

Hogwash...the profits of these corporations are soaring because they are paying 1/5 the wages and NO insurance, pensions, etc. to the Indians and Chinese. They are not doing this because they are broke.

[Peach]

I guess you haven't read the article.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

GWB?

[Dr Warmoose]

And it will take more than wishful thinking from conservatives and their free-trade prayer beads to right a sinking ship.

The problem is that there is no such thing as "free trade". There is this fiction that a highly taxed and highly regulated industry can directly compete with a relatively unencumbered "trade partner", but that is just the bilge that is being pumped out of the sinking ship. Its the obscenely high taxes through direct confiscation, and cloaked seizures through regulation, fees, interest rates and inflation that America is placing on its subjects while the rest of the world is receiving high levels of investment encouraged by activist government officials who stray from the political stance in America, whereas in the US the politicians act to destroy this country's competitiveness and enslave its people in more and more taxes and regulation, and keep engaging in unfavorable trade agreements that do little more than tilt the playing field in advantage of every other country on this planet. Chinese officials in particular make promises of one billion people rushing to buy a particular company's products. Mexico is more honest, they just make outright demands on a president who has his eyes focused almost entirely on Iraq, and is blind and deaf to the rising discontent of the American sheeple.

The ship is sinking because the politicans and the greedy corporate chieftains are busy as gremlins boring holes below the waterline in the USS America.

[Hank Rearden]

Yes, but unions helped to build the middle class we are now trying to protect. Without them we might be like Mexico, lots of factory jobs but no prosperity, not even for the factory workers.

Nonsense. My experiences with union thugs can be summarized as follows:

"I can't do that, it's not my job."
"You can't do that, it's not your job."
"I'm on break."

Screw that lazy, parasitic attitude.

[riri]

and is blind and deaf to the rising discontent of the American sheeple

He reminds me of Czar Nicholas. Rove is Rasputin.

[NRA2BFree]

Why shouldn't workers get the best for themselves.

I have no problem with anyone getting ahead, but I think it has to be equal for ALL American workers. It's not fair to people who don't belong to the unions. That's what has created the gap between the middle class and the working poor.

As an owner of several small businesses, I've been forced to compete with union wages and that kept me from being able to hire additional employees.

Small businesses are the backbone of American jobs and I suspect they will be around long after the unions are gone.