BeaverFever wrote:
With all due respect Thanos, that's a false-hood. The German and Japanese automakers are heavily unionized in their home countries where the majority of their product is made and even in the non-union US and Canadian plants, the workers are paid equivalent to union compensation in order to discourage unionization. The real "labour cost" difference between the North American automakers and their German/Japanese counterparts is the size and age of NA companies. GM Chrysler and Ford have huge populations of retirees whereas the other companies are much younger and do not. If the North American Automakers had been adequately funding their pension plans and health care obligations and investing in their prodcut instead of using their money to buy up their own stock, the stock of other companies and paying out dividends to shareholders and multi-milliaire executives we wouldn't be in this mess.
With respect to garbage collection, the argument that private companies can find guys who are so desperate they'll do a working-class job for welfare rates with not benefits is a non-starter. This is the destruction of middle-class. I bet I could find someone to do YOUR job for much much less too, do you think YOU'RE overpaid? Let me guess, you're "well-compensated," right? Your income is a "livelihood," not a "labour cost" right? Yeah, mine too. Same with the garbagemen and autoworkers, I bet.
The middle class was built by ensuring that the *average* i.e. typical person who is willing to work full-time could earn a basic standard of living that allowed them to afford the necessities to raise a family and a very modest disposable income to participate in the consumer economy and buy things made by their fellow citizens. Since Reaganomics, we've been told to buy into the argument that the "average" citizen is so common he is easily replaceable and therefore should constantly take more and more pay cuts to benefit his employer while only the rare "exceptionally skilled" people deserve to feed their families. What you now call "gold-plated" benefits used to be called "standard" benefits.
Unions aren't perfect, but they are one of the last lines of defence against this redistribution of wealth to the executive and financial class that really own this country. We're all so busy accusing eachother of being overpaid and demanding that everyone else take a pay-cut or to lower prices or taxes in the hope of some meagre or imaginary savings to us, we don't realize the only one who profits are the hedge funds, instituional investors, private equity holders and CEOs who pocket almost all of the savings while the rest of us are caught in a never-ending downward wage-price spiral, competing with globalized thrid-world labour wages. This is not capitalism, it is Reagan-omics.
Lemmy, you made some really great arguments!
geat post!
edit:can someone positive rep this guy for me? I've already used mine on a different thread.
CKA Uber 
Newbie 
