Telling RW Baloney from George F. Will

[LisaLynne]

George F. Will is vile. I know this so I can’t say I’m exactly shocked by the particular article I’m going to dissect here, but I felt that it needed to be answered. I hate reading what these compassionless men have to say as they struggle to keep the masses under the control of the corporations and evil BushCo, but there are times when they offer a small bit of insight into their workings and I think that makes delving into the sludge that they try to pass off as “commentary” sometimes worth the effort.

What particular tangle of words spewed forth from his keyboard has made me sit down to write today?

It’s published at the following link as “GM Finding Promises Hard to Keep”, but other places it’s refered to as “GM’s Welfare State”:

http://www.startribune.com/562/story/367702.html

Oh, yeah, this is going to be fun. :eyes:

So, let’s get into this thing. First of all, almost off the bat, he has to bring up France. It’s like all these wingnuts have got. Very pathetic, but I think it is one topic they can bring up for consistent laughs from their base (sort of like the Clenis).

RW Pundit: France (or Clenis)!

RW Audience: HA HA HA HA! This guy must really be on our side! He talked bad about France (or Clenis)!

I think we’ve gotten immune to a lot of things from the RW these days, but this really is a low-functioning discourse. It should be embarrassing for the one pulling the stunt, but I think they hold their audience in such contempt that they are able to preserve their dignity by being self-aware of their pandering.

Another interesting item from this “article” was that Will referred to the French’s decision to withdraw the provision in a recent labor law that an employer can not fire a worker in the first two years of employment as “a triumph of mob rule”. Now, those were actual riots, but I am fairly certain that if Bush would have even tempered his march to war in response to the global protests that took place, Will and his ilk would have felt the same way. Listening to the people you’re supposed to be working for equates to mob rule in their minds. BTW, I have a theory on why they hate protestors so much – they fear the people. We need to use that.

But, those are both minor things when one gets to the meat of the article. The rancid, maggot-filled meat. He’s saying that GM is corporate welfare state. Oh, not in the way that we (people with brains) talk about corporate welfare, but in that GM, by promising workers a pension, made itself into a welfare state, which is BAD, of course. You see, labor drove GM into the ground by expecting it to take care of them, by providing jobs and pensions. Bad labor unions! They have a sense of “entitlement” like those young protestors in France. They expected things from their employer. But, we don’t have that right – profits above all else! Labor, the men and women who actually make the corporation able to produce profits, should never think they are worth anything, according to this reasoning. We peasants are not entitled to anything – not to security, not to a job at a livable wage, not the ability to feed our children. That is ultimately what this man is trying to say, what is at the end of and beneath his rantings, unspoken but shaping them.

Feeling entitled to a pension you’ve been promised for 20 or more years really isn’t a bad thing, Mr. Will. It’s just fair. But, here he is, selling this swill to people who are in the same predicament as the GM workers—relying on a pension for when they are too old to keep working. And these people are buying it, at least for now.

Now that I’ve spent some time typing this up, I’m wondering why I did. Here, we get it. I don’t need to point this out to any of you. Did I feel the need to write it up so we might have some pre-loaded ammo in discussions with those who don’t get it? What’s the point? You can’t explain absurdity to someone who doesn’t get it: Either they see it right away or they never will.

[bunkerbuster1]

1. One disagreement

you say:

"Feeling entitled to a pension you’ve been promised for 20 or more years really isn’t a bad thing, Mr. Will. It’s just fair. But, here he is, selling this swill to people who are in the same predicament as the GM workers—relying on a pension for when they are too old to keep working."

It's important to realize that most of Will's audience, indeed most Americans, are not relying on a pension. They're stuck contributing to 401k plans that may or may not perform well; they may or may not be able to set aside enough in a given year, year after year, to provide for a decent retirement.

My point is, most of Will's readers resent and envy those who belong(ed) to unions that were able to negotiate good deals for their workers. And Georgey Boy knows it. So he plays class warfare and breeds resentment by bringing up what seems to an ordinary Joe, lucky to get any severance pay at all upon being laid off from a job, like outlandishly generous buyouts.

[LisaLynne]

3. You're absolutely right.

I often make the mistake of thinking of any retirement or pension plan as being interchangeable and you're totally right -- they're completely different.

I also think, in your main point, you're right, too -- it's resentment against others when you fear they might end up better off than you. Not a sterling example of human behavior, but a common one.

[bunkerbuster1]

6. Common behavior, one RWers exploit EVERY time labor issues arise

Think about the reaction to the last major league baseball strike, and how so much anger was directed against the players.

Of course MLB stars aren't the most sympathetic victims, but the bottom line was, they have been prevented from negotiating the best deals by the tireless efforts of owners. And yet the labor dispute story wasn't typically covered that way; your typical Joe Stupid newsreader would think "Greedy players! How dare they want more than the millions they already make to play a kid's game!?!"

Typical corporate-media coverage of UAW workers getting jettisoned by automakers will be covered in a similar fashion, so's to generate as much resentment and envy as possible.

That's how labor issues are almost always covered here in the US.

[zbdent]

9. Did Will, an avid baseball fan, ever mention in his articles

the "high-priced vehicles" which the millionaire ballplayers were always shown driving from their "office", the ballpark?

Did he ever mention the "high-priced vehicles" (or, for that matter, "chauffer-driven vehicles") that the millionaire/billionaire team owners drove from their offices, which were never shown during the strike? (Of course, by the "liberal media", which "absolutely hates" capitalism and rich people . . .)

[DemoTex]

8. Unions that were able to negotiate good deals for their workers ..

A pension in a union shop is nothing more than deferred wages. My union negotiated a pretty decent pension for me and my fellow pilots. For that pension, we gave in on other things: pay raises, duty rigs, night differentials, vacation time, and so on. A pension is just a slice of a pie that has a finite and fixed size.
Now, having said that, I can say that my deferred wages were stolen from me on March 31, 2003, when US Airways terminated my pension plan. The then-CEO, Dave Siegel, was fired later that year and left with a $10-million severance package. So what's to envy about the state of pensions in today's business environment? Management has a license to steal, and steal they will. Verb sap!

[LisaLynne]

15. That's a great way of thinking about pensions ...

I, too, have a pension, but I've never thought about it as deferred wages, but I think I will from now on! I've always had 401ks before, that's why I'm a little uneducated about pensions. :) Anyway, yeah, the CEOs can steal and for some reason people like Will and rank and file Repugs think they have that right. I don't get it.

[Syncronaut Seven]

2. I get tired of pointing out the glaringly obvious too.

Every fucking day. On the bright side, I'm fairly sure that ignorance and pride, not stupidity, is the main issue here.

Funny too, I decimated some asshole in a political bar argument last week. I was giving myself room to bob (thinking I might have to). To the guys credit, he stormed out, instead of swinging. It was his girlfriend who left the impact. She muttered to me on the way out, "you could have left him with AT LEAST a shred of pride".

Is that what it's about? Pride? What a bill of goods that poor SOB was sold.

[LisaLynne]

4. Ha ha ha!

It nice to have confirmation that you've really made your point. :) Usually, we never get that because they remove themselves from the situation (as this dude did) when they know they've really had it and all we can hope for is that later it sinks in. :)

[n2doc]

5. GM's problems

Have everything to do with their product line. Yes, they have higher labor costs. People will buy a product that costs more if the quality, specs and style are there. Just try to buy a Prius nowadays. Somehow I doubt that Toyota in Japan pays their workers starvation wages. Instead of innovating and using the skills of the workers they have, GM just lays them off or does stupid things like the "job bank" which just provide fodder for their RW critics.
What is really happening is a push towards eliminating the older worker. The big companies want to be able to get rid of anybody once they start to reach a point where they have significant health care costs, and god forbid they actually want some kind of retirement. Retirement is only for the Executives, who really need it since they have unfortunately spent all of their multi-million dollar bonuses and salaries maintaining their 5 vacation mansions. The move to new plants in the South is a way to temporarily change the population of workers to a younger, cheaper one. But once those workers start to get old, watch for a new move.

[LisaLynne]

7. Good point about Toyota.

:thumbsup:

And yeah I have seen it happen with older workers. It's sickening. Even when, from the examples I've personally seen, the older worker is more experienced and can do more than the younger "replacement". We have no respect for age and experience in our culture. x(

[EC]

10. One thing these RW asses seem to forget, GM signed a

contract with the employees...if the contract wasn't good for them they had the choice of not signing it...once they did sign, it's a valid contract and should be upheld....free enterprise and all, you know...

[underpants]

12. More victimization

Those poor poor GM execs didn't have a chance against those wiley union reps.

:sarcasm:

You are right they always forget that part of the part about how the workers on the floor just make what they are told to make it is the top floor people who are poorly designing and approving vehicles no one wants.

[Blue_Tires]

11. sad

for so long, SO many anti-UAW/CAW memes have been printed in the WSJ and other major daily papers with ZERO rebuttals....

honestly, when was the last time anyone saw a pro-union op-ed in a major paper?

[William Seger]

13. What George Will doesn't understand about capitalism

George Will can't think past the "lost" profits of GM investors because unions have forced them to share a larger percentage of those profits. The theory of capitalism is that capital is used to buy resouces and labor to make products that are worth more than the manufacturing cost. But no wealth is created unless those products are actually sold; you can't just presume a market.

What George Will doesn't understand about capitalism is that the money paid to those union workers -- whether it's wages or pensions -- ends up being income to other businesses.

It isn't "entitlements" that are hurting GM -- it's a lack of growth in the market for their products, because too many in the priviledged class don't understand that sharing the wealth is the key to creating new wealth. At the beginning of the 20th Century, over half of the American people lived in subsistence poverty. The rise of Progressive economic reform -- sharing the wealth with the people who actually create it with their labor -- not only built a strong middle class; it also greatly increased both the size and the wealth of the upper class, by creating the world's largest consumer class.

[LisaLynne]

14. Well said ...

especially the point about corporations like GM presuming a market. In this editorial, he accuses labor of making the mistake of presuming the existance of the company, but isn't the company doing exactly the same thing by presuming that there will be a market? My mother who is not an economics major by a long shot can even see that if the middle class is destroyed, who is here to buy these products? I suppose the corporations think they can open up markets abroad, but how is that really going to work? At some point, there is going to have to be a large group of people who can afford to buy the products. If this group goes away because the up-upper class is keeping all the money, where is the market?

This is one of the problems with a Wal-Mart economy. Where Ford famously wanted to pay his workers enough to buy his cars, Wal-Mart has a vested interest in keep their workers poor so that they HAVE to shop at Wal-Mart.

[ProfessorGAC]

16. Therein Lies The Ultimate Contradiction

Anti-socialists like to refer to social programs and communist system as a "redistribution of wealth". But, capitalism only works, even in theory, BECAUSE IT'S A FORM OF REDISTRIBUTION OF WEATH! If all capital flows up and stops there, there is zero growth, and then negative growth.

So, without a redistribution of wealth, NO ECONOMIC SYSTEM WORKS! You can call the economic system "fred" and it still doesn't matter. The wealth must be constantly circulated and redistibuted, or we have total stagnation, follwed by collapse.
The Professor