War on the American Worker

[louis c]

To listen to these assholes on cable, they would have you think that this economic meltdown is as a result of the American worker earning too much. What unbridled nonsense and hypocrisy.

These same assholes were claiming less than two months ago, during the saga of "Joe the Plumber" that $250,000 a year was barley middle-class. I heard them drawl on and on about how little that actually was. Now, the problem in the auto industry is that American workers are making "too much". That the non-union people in the South, working for foreign companies, have it about right, making less. Oh, I understand, it's the "greedy" workers who want health care and a pension who created this crisis, not the slime-balls who made 19 billion dollars in bonuses last year at Goldman Sachs alone, that are to blame.

25 years ago, private sector workers averaged about 25% more in salaries and benefits than public sector workers. Now, public sector workers average 40% more. I'm of the opinion that we have to raise the private sector to be at least equal to the public. These pieces of shit who want to pit middle-class workers against one another are trying to convince the private sector to join forces with the greedy pricks to reduce the salaries of the public sector. Race to the bottom.

Don't be fooled. The problem is at the top, not in the middle-class. We have to manufacture goods here in America and create good jobs to revive this economy. Someone has to buy the products, and it won't be the Chinese that are paid $1 a day.

In 1955, 55% of Americans belonged to a labor unions. In 1980 it was 20%. Now, it's less than 8%. Yet these assholes want to blame labor unions for the decline in the economic standing of America. Guess what, assholes, it's the companies that sent the jobs overseas and the greedy bastards that leveraged America for short-term gain and huge bonuses that destroyed this economy. The American middle-class is the goose that lays the economic golden eggs. You fucking assholes who shipped our jobs overseas and leveraged our money killed that goose. Therein lies the problem

[Trajan]

1. The problem with the economy is NOT workers making too much ...

Its workers who make too little ....

[louis c]

2. That's exactly my point (NT)

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Exactly Right

Many papers have been published, including one by me in 1994, that mathematically prove(!) that no macroeconomy is sustainable without a large middle class with significant discretionary cash.

Pay people less, and you get less of both of the above, which has the worst possible effect on the economy.
The Professor

[noamnety]

3. That's one aspect of the system.

The other is that the more we "produce", the more we are being the greedy bastards that leverage other countries' natural resource for short term gain, ruining their means of survival in the process. The economic system is dependent on those at the top taking advantage of those in the middle, while we in the middle take advantage of those still lower down (sweat shop labor, depletion of resources in developing countries, eating the results of destruction farming methods). The system, in other words, is dependent on having an infinite amount of resources that can be exploited ... but we aren't in an infinite world.

The idea behind The Story of Stuff is that even if we did "revive" our economy, it's built on a model that is unsustainable.

So we can agree that the problem in individual industries - short term - is that the folks at the top are pocketing obscene amounts of dollars. But fixing that aspect of it doesn't really address the real long term problem that nobody seems ready to acknowledge.

[HughBeaumont]

5. Lower taxation = Boom/Balloon/CRASH!

History dictates this like clockwork, yet you can't sell the average idiot that the CEO is screwing them worse than their CEO-bought Republican government did. They're too busy eating each other and finding someone to hate instead of realizing they're all going to be in the same lifeboat once the Titanic sinks. They're too busy thinking lower taxes rather than a raise are going to fill that empty wallet.

Damned workers. Why can't they just get paid 7 bucks an hour like everyone else? Never mind that won't get you an apartment anywhere in the country, much less a home. Or groceries. Or a car made after 2003. Or health care. Or any sort of sustenance should you have a family.

[raccoon]

13. Or any sort of sustenance should you be single, either. nt

[cliffordu]

23. Yep.

[Greyhound]

6. In yet another irony that usually goes unsaid, not one of those fuckers makes less than $250K. n/t

[hfojvt]

25. so when they talk about over-paid workers

they speak from experience. Their own.

[Brewman_Jax]

7. Heard that BS last night

but they conveniently overlook the fact that the execs make on average over 400 times the worker base salary, but it's the workers' and unions' fault because they "make too much and want benefits". GMAFB! This from a hippy-looking roadie (looks like Leo from "That 70's Show) that doesn't have health coverage. The gods forbid that he should need it.

I think the worse thing for these sorry RW bastards is for them to live in the world that they'd gladly condemn us to.

[louis c]

8. I've often wanted the same thing, except I have to live here, too.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. K & R

[This One]

10. It's not the union's fault the execs decided to pass on hybrids

[onethatcares]

11. was the Johnstown Flood the fault of the workers?

or their employees? Gauddammn those lily white hands and smug smiles that let you know, "look lucille, a working man, isn't that quaint?"

[rucky]

12. K to the R

[louis c]

24. Thanks for the kick (NT)

[rhett o rick]

14. Great post. This is a class war and most Congress members support the wrong class.

We need to get control of the Democratic Party and elect real people not these rich bastards that answer only to big money lobbyists. We will not see any change, in spite of what Obama has promised until we get rid of all our Congress-critters that only listen to big money.

[Edweird]

15. It's not just the RW that is hostle to workers. Many here on DU are as well.

We're fucked from every angle, and didn't even get dinner beforehand.

[Better Believe It]

19. That's because they resent workers making a good wage and benefits without all that schooling!

[Edweird]

20. Interesting angle. I could easily see that being the case.

[Thickasabrick]

16. When the airlines went bankrupt and screwed their pensioners - why

didn't we hear the same amount of passion? Their pension plans were taken over by the Fed at 40 cents on the dollar (or something like that) and nobody was screaming then (maybe they were but not very loudly).

How are autoworkers pensions more important than the airline workers pensions. I'm just asking because I've been thinking alot about them today.

[louis c]

17. sometimes we learn from our mistakes

and I wasn't that involved in anything in the early eighties. But I never crossed a picket line. I remember when PATCO struck, and I ate a Florida ticket to avoid crossing the line.

I took my car on a train, which sucked, from Lorton Virginia to someplace in the middle of Florida, with my car. Auto-Train something or other. Must have been 25 years ago, when I was a puppy.

[screembloodymurder]

18. We need to get militant now!

:mad:

[OneGrassRoot]

21. I would think Michael Moore is going to come out swinging big time....

any day now, to really put a focus on the attack on the workers.

[southerncrone]

22. The problem is the "free" trade agreements.

They are at the base of all our current financial woes.

It is not a crime for American workers to make a decent wage.
It is a crime that corporations are expecting to get away with paying slave wages & running the market, with our government facilitating it.

This is about completely busting the unions in this country. It began w/Raygun & the air traffic controllers. Ever since there has been a campaign to demonize unions & bust them at every opportunity.

The bottom line is all that matters to these thugs. Do they not realize that when most of the world makes slave wages, that no one will be able to buy their over-priced products?

Allowing foreign car makers to put non-union plants in our country has just muddied the water & given them a stronger footing.

Notice that all the Congress Critters that are arguing against helping the Big 3 have foreign car plants in their cheap-wage, right-to-work states....Shelby(AL)--BMW, Wamp(TN)--Volkswagen, McConnel(KY)--Toyota....it's no accident these plants chose these locations.

Not helping the Big 3 will decimate our economy.

And the argument that auto mgmt. is to blame for not having a better business plan is absurd when they just bailed out the financial markets when they made VERY bad undersecured loans, but they were not held accountable. A huge bailout was just handed to them. Now they don't want to help a sector of our economy that is the backbone of manufacturing in this country? It's crazy.

[Mike 03]

26. Anybody making that argument should be ashamed

Workers' wages have dropped under Bush by percentage and not kept pace with inflation.

Shame.

Great post though.

K&R

[louis c]

27. Thanks (NT)