How to save the Big 3 US automakers

maccool

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

I'm talking my country. And yes, I've done (for my level of education) some pretty extensive research on the history of the unions here, and I'm pretty sure that since a lot of my sources from the past were inherently hostile to labour unions, they would've dug it up for me.
If you want to start looking at American labor unions, frankly that would be more interesting than the unproductive back-and-forth going on with Moosashi now (I'm as shocked as you), try googling, 'Wobblies'. You may already know of them, but they're sort of the evil commies of the U.S. I think they're about as dangerous as a Danish invasion of Lapland, but this is America and we're still afraid of reds.



 

Johnny

Banned
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

But they *are* disappearing. At least in the US. And manufacturing jobs are leaving the areas that used to be heavily unionized.
I wouldn't call it disappearing just yet. More like shrinking. They could be around forever.



 

WildBerry

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

If you want to start looking at American labor unions, frankly that would be more interesting than the unproductive back-and-forth going on with Moosashi now (I'm as shocked as you), try googling, 'Wobblies'. You may already know of them, but they're sort of the evil commies of the U.S. I think they're about as dangerous as a Danish invasion of Lapland, but this is America and we're still afraid of reds.
That was interesting, I'll be looking deeper into it when I have time (skimmed few of the first google hits now, read the Wiki). It is interesting to note that Hiski Salomaa, a famous songwriter and a quite popular one at his time, belonged to the Wobblies. It is striking because his songs not only admired the industrial and industrious nature of American society, but also the enterpreneurial and adventurist spirits therein. He was quite possibly the most sincere, the biggest and the most influential U.S.-fanboi ever in Finland. The contrast of his background (and what is expected of it) and what he did is an amusing one.



 

Johnny

Banned
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Meanwhile, why are people speaking against socialism while at the same time in favor of the big 3. Aren't the big 3 asking the government for money to make ends met?
 

WildBerry

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Meanwhile, why are people speaking against socialism while at the same time in favor of the big 3. Aren't the big 3 asking the government for money to make ends met?
The people who you're referring to taking sides of the employer in general, but they're not calling for subsidising them - it's not a call to bend knee to them, just let them organise their labour as they will. If I read most of the posts here right.



 

Johnny

Banned
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

The people who you're referring to taking sides of the employer in general, but they're not calling for subsidising them - it's not a call to bend knee to them, just let them organise their labour as they will. If I read most of the posts here right.
In this case even the employer supports socialism. As long as it's on their end anyway.



 

WildBerry

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

In this case even the employer supports socialism. As long as it's on their end anyway.
Yes, that's true. But I haven't seen anyone voice unconditional support for the carmakers. In fact, most here seem to argue that they need no other support than being released of legal obligations concerning workforce.



 

Johnny

Banned
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Yes, that's true. But I haven't seen anyone voice unconditional support for the carmakers. In fact, most here seem to argue that they need no other support than being released of legal obligations concerning workforce.
Lower wages was a demand made by the government in order for the car companies to recive money. Lowered ages alone would not be enough.



 

vdzele

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

“The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe [monetary] contractions of 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38. No other 20-year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contraction,
This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System... and that the severity of each of the major contractions -- 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38 -- is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by then Reserve authorities....
Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes -- excusable or not -- can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. If is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any affective check by the body politic -- this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.... to paraphrase Clemencea: money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.

The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933."


Milton Friedman, economist, Nobel prize winner.

In a situation when the whole global economy is based on a Ponzi Scheme, meaning that the whole commerce is living on a everyday dose of credits, just like as junkie needs his drugs, freezing the issuance of new credits so that the old debts could be repaid with “new money” - would have a disaster effects. This will have the same effect as contracting the money from circulation as Milton described it.

Freezing the issuance of new credits is staged. Everybody knew that the house market could not rise endlessly and that the amount of houses will reach its mathematical limit until no one will need to buy it. Also there were millions of articles, books, documentaries since 2000… where experts around the globe pointed that US financial policy will have fatal results on global commerce. One of them was Peter Schiff who was laughed when speaking openly about this great issue, just like me on boards of diii.net….LOL’d and named as psycho, loony, weirdo …. Btw, I don’t mind guys, you simply don’t have the experience.

Also they deliberately extracted western industry and incorporated it in the eastern societies. During this transition time, imbalance in trade created an enormous debt in the west towards east, because east created more and more and the west was sharply declining in offers. In past 10 years, US heavily borrowed from China and other countries so that there phony economy could work, trillions of dollars. They spent this money on garbage, boys bought gadgets, girls bought makeup, parents new houses that they could not afford…Ponzi economy was kept on borrowing and spending on things that are not productive.

Savings were deliberately destroyed so no liquidity could save the Ponzi scheme from the total collapse when time comes. They did this by forcing people to go on Wall streets because saving interest rates were always lower than the inflation and the so called market on Wall Street had a higher rate of growth. This was a trap. Everybody bought craps on Wall Street and they thought that this modern economy will bring them joy and happiness endlessly.

Creating this global economy had a far reaching goal. In a case of west vs east we have a situation now that US is totally bankrupted and robbed (8.5 trillions in the past 2 months – Bloomberg and AP). They owe to China over 3.5 trillion dollars and there is no way that they could pay them back. During this time of borrowing US was heavily armed. We are on a point now where one economic super power wants there money back from a bankrupted military super power. And this military bankrupted super power can blow this globe to pieces if some one dares to buy ….lets say Hollywood….or Texas, Alaska ….No one can’t get his money back in east. Usury Lords do have a solution for this small inconvenient situation – why fight? Why not merge? And erase all debts !?

They also secured that no economy could provide liquidity by distributing polluted AAA bonds worldwide and imploding their Ponzi economies simultaneously when Anglo-phony economy starts to collapse. This will lead to the collapse of our modern societies as we know it. Because Ponzi balloon was blown for the past 100 years, $700 trillion global debt will wipe everything. There is nothing that we could do now to stop this biblical domino effect.

Madoff deliberately spoke in front of his fiends and employees how his firm really worked in the past decades. He wanted everybody to know how the global economy really works, this is his behest to next generations. His micro ponzi scheme could not work in a really regulated environment; Usury Lords approved a lot of these cloned schemes to their loyal friends.

Most of you were never hungry as I was, so you still don’t know what I am talking about.
 

krischan

Europe Trade Moderator
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

People didn't laugh about your predictions about the US economy, it were the conspiracy theories you spun around the issue :p
 

vdzele

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Well, will have to wait and see if some well educated spontaneous-theorist will rise up and fix our common problem.:whistling:
 

SnickerSnack

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Wildberry

That wasn't my intention - in fact, the example wasn't bad, as it illustrated it was reasonably expected that the Unions were behind schemes like the one. I just wanted an example with a more direct relevance, where the vicious part was clearly shown, since I correctly assumed from his accounts that such were relatively easy to extract.
You suggested that the example was useless since there was no real evidence. Do you mean the example was not relevant because it did not occur in Finland? I don't know what you mean by "the vicious part." I think it's pretty vicious to sabotage safety equipment.

But the posts from 74 to 77 had nothing to do with the non-violent record of Finnish labour unions, or even the vicious nature I was discussing there. The quote was not relevant to what you were saying, nor had I addressed what AJ said in one way or another.
I was quoting you a second time in order to point to where you had asked for an example, it had nothing to do with AJ. I was addressing AJ, and it had nothing to do with your post. Perhaps I should have put some delimiter there, I'll go edit that in now.



AreoJonesy

I think this is largely because so much information is available about companies and it's hard for them to engage in some of the shady practices that necessitated unionization.

Tanooki said unions were no longer needed. I was saying that the balance of power is in favor of the union. And part of my reasoning is that public companies are under pressure from the shareholders. I draw no conclusions about the necessity of unions, but I do think saying they are no longer needed at all plays into the point Johnny was getting into in the post I quoted above.

My problem is that we gave unions new rights to deal with things that should have been covered under laws against employers. Now we no longer need to bind employers legally as public opinion does that very well in the information age. But there has been no similar reduction in union power.

It's like employers had all the guns, so we decided to use the law to give workers some guns to fight back. Employers then decided they no longer needed to be armed because it's bad business, but no one took the guns from the unions. So now they have an upper hand. Especially for public companies.

Besides, how else could toll takers end up making $71,000/yr on average?
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/multimedia/m/20960151/dozens_of_toll_takers_may_lose_jobs.htm?seek=10.149
You seemed to say that the union's power to prevent unsafe work conditions should be taken away:

What I see as being the biggest problem is that unions were given a legal way to fight against unfair practices by employers. Employers have shaped up their act enormously, but unions still have the power they were previously granted by law. Another problem is that management is already up against shareholder interests. The union doesn't have the same additional outside force, which also gives them a bit more leverage.

That would make them much less powerful and as Johnny said, the companies are always testing the fence. Are workers supposed to rely solely on public outcry to protect them from unsafe working conditions? They need the legal ability to protect themselves. Also, how does it hurt the companies if unions have power that they can't use (since the companies never violate any rights)?

The fact that a company is a company and has shareholders is irrelevant. Collectively, the unions take more bathroom breaks; should we limit the power of management to balance this?


 

AeroJonesy

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

You seemed to say that the union's power to prevent unsafe work conditions should be taken away:
Well we have OSHA and other laws now that prevent employers from creating unsafe workplaces. So we don't need to give unions legal power to enforce them.

That would make them much less powerful and as Johnny said, the companies are always testing the fence. Are workers supposed to rely solely on public outcry to protect them from unsafe working conditions? They need the legal ability to protect themselves. Also, how does it hurt the companies if unions have power that they can't use (since the companies never violate any rights)?
But union power doesn't exist only when rights are being violated. It always exists, regardless of violations or not. That's precisely what I'm getting at.

The fact that a company is a company and has shareholders is irrelevant. Collectively, the unions take more bathroom breaks; should we limit the power of management to balance this?
The fact that a company has shareholders means that the company is already forced to take certain actions that it may not want to. And often, that means caving to unions even when it isn't a good idea in the long term. Corporate officers owe a duty to their shareholders now not in the long term. So a union strike is much more effective against a public company than against a private one. Why do you think unionization rates in private companies is so much lower than in public?



 

maccool

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Most of you were never hungry as I was, so you still don’t know what I am talking about.
Grow your own or shut the hell up about it if it's that important to you. Milton Friedman never made you dinner.



 

WildBerry

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Wildberry

You suggested that the example was useless since there was no real evidence. Do you mean the example was not relevant because it did not occur in Finland? I don't know what you mean by "the vicious part." I think it's pretty vicious to sabotage safety equipment.
I meant that it only proves that the Unions were generally suspsected to have done it, while there are plenty of examples where the members of the Unions have actually been proven to have done something. Suspicions, then, are more relevant in proving how the Unions are viewed than to what the Unions have actually done. I assume I've been over this already, though.

The Finland's (and that of a million-strong Union with more than hundred years of history) relevance is a separate argument trying to show that the Unions are not necessarily inherently violent, but you've never been arguing that anyway. Sorry for riding on two horses here.

I was quoting you a second time in order to point to where you had asked for an example, it had nothing to do with AJ. I was addressing AJ, and it had nothing to do with your post. Perhaps I should have put some delimiter there, I'll go edit that in now.
Ah, now I see your point. Thanks.



 
Last edited:

Johnny

Banned
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Dondrei:

Sorry, I'm not fluent in the pc-asterisk language. What the **** were you trying to say?
There's only one five letter word that is censored around here and it's pretty easy to guess. Especialy in context.



 

The Sandcat

Diabloii.Net Member
Re: How to save the Big 3 US automakers

Its not a question of fixing the big 3,but of fixing the USA.There is too much greed and sheer crookedness in the management of big firms.And a lot of sheer stupidity.What the hell are these big bosses being paid for?Goofing around? Why does nobody reinvest their profit in their own firm? The profit goes to shareholders,and the business is run on credit.Once that dries up ...nighty-night!
The problem here is America's love of credit.Almost everyone has several credit cards,often maxed out.Businesses are no better.This cheap credit has to stop, once and for all.It is time Americans take on less debt and save more.
And everytime the USA goof off somwhere,the rest of the world has to suffer.Sure hope Obama can shake things up.
The system has become so rotten,I'd let it crash and start from scratch.All these bailouts will come back to haunt the countries who have given them.And in the end, the taxpayer will foot the bill.Everybody will be off even worse then.
 
Top