Economy helping us

[waygard33]

I know there are hard working union folks out there. Unfortunately their lawyers and managers have taken things to the ridiculous level and it is time to reset.

I realized how out of control it was while sitting in McCormack place in Chicago, trying to setup some electronic equipment for a trade show. I was told I could not even plug in my equipment (not even a lousy PC). Only a union electrician could perform this dangerous task  :eyecrazy:

After waiting for 45 minutes for a qualified electrician to show up, I plugged in my own equipment (about the same as plugging in your XBox). I was promptly scolded by the 'powers that be' and had a greivance filed against me.  :yikes:

Since I was hit over the head with this ridiculous incident, I have a hard time finding any sympathy for unions. I know this is just 1 incident, but I've heard of many more and the car companies and their leaders seem to happily represent this behavior.

I have friends who are union workers and go to work every day, work hard, and come home at night to take care of their families and start all over the next day. I would not hesitate to work with or hire this type of person. This type of persone no longer needs the unions. This type of person could get a job anywhere. At this point, IMO, the unions are only needed to protect the ridiculous worker (read: the problem worker), and their leaders. NO THANKS!

Finally, I understand that their are a lot more problems that need to be solved, but the unions are at the top of my list, along with a few others. I agree with WAvery...the quicker the american car companies die, the quicker they can get reorganized and get back to work...hard work! :usflag:

Wayne in Oregon

[WV Hillbilly]

Waverly,

   I'm with you.....UNIONS have got to go.....they are killing this country!


When it comes time for me to purchase a new auto it won't be from the Big 3.  I'll go with a Toyota or Honda made in American by American workers who are not over paid and do make a quality auto!

[austinado16]

Thanks for sharing that letter Cajun.  Excellent read and I couldn't agree more with every line.

It's funny, I'm a car guy, have been since I was a kid.  45 years old now, and I can never remember a time when, other than full sized trucks, America wasn't completely behind curve of what real car building was all about.  

I've watched VW, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Datsun(Nissan), Honda, Mazda, Kia, Hyundi and even Daywoo(sp?) start here, from infancy, selling little cracker boxes or cars that were so basic, they were nothing more than transportation that got you out of the weather.  In 40 years (or less), those companies grown into automotive world powers, and even the cr@ppiest Kia is better than a mid-priced American product.  Even the Toyotas, Hondas, and for 4 years VW, that were made in factories here in America, were/are 100 times better than anything being built by the big 3.

Unbelievable that GM/Chrysler/Ford have never once, in 40 years, figured it out.  Even Datsun, in its infancy, would buy a competitors car, ship it to Japan, take it apart and replicate it, improving on the design, and making the design their own.  The 510's and 810's are a great example of copying a BMW 2002.  The 240z (and the 810's) used a carbon copy of Mercedes venerable 2.5L straight six.  An yet in 40 years the big 3 haven't figured out why a Camry or Accord is the best selling car for their size, or how to build an indestructible econo-box that gets 35-40mpg.  

Yet, there they sit, hand held out, asking for a pay off.  Cars and trucks being built in villages in Mexico, by Mexicans, but the companies want a check from the government....and then get it.   I would have told them, "The check is right here on my desk.  Give me a call when you've opened up all your factories here, and put everyone back to work.....and I'll stick it in the mail."

I've got the same sentiment for the banks, who are now worse than ever, having received their pay off.  I was in a Washington Mutual the other day, trying to cash one of their checks.  The wanted $5 because the check was written out of an account in one of their branches 25mi away.  Fantastic customer service.

[kjcamper]

Something I heard last week on the subject of workers looking for jobs. To stay in line with the original post of what is the economy doing for us, I heard that some landscaping companies that were always hiring immigrants to do jobs that local people were not going to do for minimum wage or to lazy to do are hiring locals instead of immigrants. The people who are out of work and out of unemployment and/or life savings are taking these low paying jobs. Time will tell as for the quality of the job as some other people have suggested with the auto industry. The downside of this is the people who would normally be taking that job are now forced to return to their own country and try to find work there. So to give the best answer to the question of what our economy is going to do for us is it is going to correct the wrongs of the past 20 years and bring everybody back to earth and it is going to be a burden on everyone for at least another 10 years. That is just my thoughts, NO MORE FREE LUNCHES, everything will come down in price (a RECESSION) and wages will come down to match as businesses cut jobs or wages and force workers to work for less or be unemployed.

[Shredder]

Shredder......sit down and do the math.......

When the economy was going strong, the unions squeezed industry for a bigger piece ofQUOTE]

OK, if your theory is right, union membership is the lowest it's been in years, union wages have fallen dramatically, we should be booming, right? No, you can't keep knocking down the middle class and expect everything to be peachy keen. The last eight years have been as good of an example as you can get. It's just like a drunken episode , in the short term things are great, then comes the hang over. Rob the poor to give to the rich (trickle down) has proven to be a colossal failure. Relaxing regulations on corporations has got us into unimaginable problems. CEO's giant salaries have no basis in reality, they have not given us value in any known measure. Some of the highest paid have been in the financial industry, the financial industry shows keenly what can happen, how corporate greed can hurt us all. Low taxes have given us masses of uneducated kids that can not compete. I know it's in fashion to blame someone for all your problems. But these problems are all of our own fault, we let them happen. We voted with apathy, we grinned at our 401 k statements without any regard to corporate greed or fairness. Blaming some boogieman (union people, blacks, browns, yellows, pinks, greens, ect) is not the answer. We all have to take responsibility for what happened, pull up our bootstraps, get to work and not let it happen again. One way to start would be to put pressure on the pols to eliminate lobbying. Cutting them off at the corporate trough would be a good start BTW.... I do not belong to any union and am a independent voter....shredder

[austinado16]

I'm certainly not blaming the American worker, and I don't think wavery is either.  I'm blaming the process.......the fish rots from the head down.  I'm certainly not saying Union Labor is the entire fault.  I'm saying, as have others, that it's a big driving force in the type, speed, quality of work that gets done.  A previous poster mentioned the word "entitlement."  This is exactly what I'm taking about.  If I'm putting lugnuts on a wheel for 8hrs a day and getting paid $30/hr to do it, on a high school education(at best) there's an ingrained entitlement issue.  Then me and my buddies don't want to work to hard, because then non-union management will always expect that much work and we're screwed...so we decide to work at a nice slow pace.

This is what I'm talking about........that how can a company "afford" to remain viable in the US, when unions are creating a workforce that works like we've previously described.

Likewise, regarding cheap foreign labor that's come into our country (for the last 200+ years).  That's what built this country, whether you're talking about black slaves as the base for the economy in the south, chinese as the base for building our railroad infrastructure, or hispanics as a base for agriculture, hotels, restaurants and hospitals.  That ship has sailed and you aren't ever going to turn that back.  There are not going to be white people (and I'm not making a racist statement) lining up to pick strawberries and lettuce, or wash dishes, or clean hotel rooms and hospital rooms.......and if they did, imagine how much your food would cost once the unions got ahold of it all and wages quadrupled, and production dropped 75%.

[wavery]

Shredder......sit down and do the math.......

When the economy was going strong, the unions squeezed industry for a bigger piece ofQUOTE]

OK, if your theory is right, union membership is the lowest it's been in years, union wages have fallen dramatically, we should be booming, right? No, you can't keep knocking down the middle class and expect everything to be peachy keen. The last eight years have been as good of an example as you can get. It's just like a drunken episode , in the short term things are great, then comes the hang over. Rob the poor to give to the rich (trickle down) has proven to be a colossal failure. Relaxing regulations on corporations has got us into unimaginable problems. CEO's giant salaries have no basis in reality, they have not given us value in any known measure. Some of the highest paid have been in the financial industry, the financial industry shows keenly what can happen, how corporate greed can hurt us all. Low taxes have given us masses of uneducated kids that can not compete. I know it's in fashion to blame someone for all your problems. But these problems are all of our own fault, we let them happen. We voted with apathy, we grinned at our 401 k statements without any regard to corporate greed or fairness. Blaming some boogieman (union people, blacks, browns, yellows, pinks, greens, ect) is not the answer. We all have to take responsibility for what happened, pull up our bootstraps, get to work and not let it happen again. One way to start would be to put pressure on the pols to eliminate lobbying. Cutting them off at the corporate trough would be a good start BTW.... I do not belong to any union and am a independent voter....shredder

Shredder,

You are absolutely right. This is all about taking personal responsibility and also taking action.

The damage that the unions have done to US industry has been going on over a 40 year period. When people stop buying and industry is losing $, there is nothing for management to use for re-designing and re-tooling our factories and certainly nothing to keep and attract share holders.

In order to develop and produce a product and run a profitable company (from the smallest to the biggest) there must be profit (thus Capitalism as apposed to Communism). When the unions (Communist thinkers) see big industry making a profit (especially the UAW/Mafia), they swoop in to take "Their fair share". This paralyzes industry (Capatilism failing). Instead of taking profits and using a percentage for R&D, product improvement and re-designing, that % is taken by the unions. When times get tough, like today, it is impossible to initiate improvements (that thought is simply naive).

There was a time in this countries history (sadly) that workers needed to form unions to protect themselves from abusive employers. In this day & age, workers are protected by laws. If an employer is abusive, he gets sued (union or no union).

IMO the roll reversed in the late 50's early 60's where the employer no longer abused the worker. With the power of the unions and threats of strikes crippling production, the Unions/workers now abuse the employers and we end up with the inmates running the asylums.

I don't care what kind of business that one is in, big or small, the goal is to maximize profit and growth through capturing market share. It really isn't a lot more complicated than that (That's why I say....."Do the math"). If consumers are not buying your product, you have to make changes to your business or loose market share. If that means building a better mouse trap to compete with other mouse trap builders, you must have resources to do so. If all of those resources are sucked up by greedy, lazy workers that find more benefit in working slow and fighting change than working efficiently as possible, the system fails. It's just that simple.

Union rhetoric tries to blame management for the quality of production but that is just plain STUPID logic. Management is not union and must perform in order to keep their jobs. Management makes all of the suggestions for improving production that they can but it all hinges on the legal and financial constraints of the company. Someone, at the top, must make the decision whether production changes will turn into bigger market share or simply a loss of profit. These people are not stupid. They know that US products cannot compete with foreign. Do we think (in our arrogant armchair) that they can't see that? How arrogant is that?

Manufacturers respond to consumer demands. That is what ends up in their fair share of market demand. If the consumer is demanding SUV's but Ford (or the government......now there's a genius plan) says, "Nope, it's more profitable to build light, more fuel efficient vehicles", guess what........consumers will still buy SUV's because someone else will build them. That's called "Loss of market share.......or more simply put "Death nail".

Quality is an entirely different issue. If anyone thinks that our auto manufacturers are not capable of producing the highest quality product in the world they must have their head up their a$$. It's all about how much it costs to build and how much the consumer is willing to pay. That does not equate to material costs either. It equates to high intensity labor costs. Our labor costs are so far higher than the rest of the world that increasing the labor on each vehicle exponentially increase the price of the vehicle.........or any other union product.

Union leaders exist not to help labor negotiate with management. That's BS clear and simple. The labor market can do that. Without that balance, a "Free market society" cannot exist. This country is falling apart because we are seeing the results of a failed, "Free market". Free market can work well but it must not be controlled.......once it's controlled, it is no longer "Free".

DO THE MATH!!!!

[kimrb266]

Buying things isn't going to help this economy. That's why we're in the state we're in right now.......we've become a consumer economy, instead of a manufacturing economy.
 
Buying a monster TV that was made in a village in Mexico or an industrial ghetto in China or Taiwan, doesn't help our economy....other than some 19yr old at Best Buy continues to be employed at minimum wage.
 
The economy "should" be helping us by providing jobs and careers. The government "should" be helping the economy by making sure that jobs stay here in America.......you want to sell something in the USA, then you better build it here. We intern would be helping the economy by working and producing products to a standard that is so good, the products want to be purchased.
 
Use the model from the Great Depression in the '30s. The government tried to put people to work, building this country. Of course WWII helped that effort out tremendously, and then after the war people went to work, started companies, bought homes and cars, and other goods. It was made here, and bought here, and people weren't running up umpteen thousand dollars in CC debt, so they could live better than their wage allowed.
 
That's my 2 cents worth.

You and DH have the same state of mind.  He too thinks that we've been putting too much emphasis on retail and not enough in other areas.  It has been if there was an empty partial of land, they would build a retail mall.   He also says that NOTHING is made in America anymore and the quality of the imported products aren't any good.
 
You and my DH would have a great conversation if you were together.

[kimrb266]

Hi,
 
Interesting indeed. Here is my take - as the instigator of the 'previous thread jumpstarting the economy by spending some money'
 
Yes we are all guilty of participating in the consumer society- some more than others I might add. In my opinion it's an easy decision: if you can afford it, it's OK to buy it; if you cannot, wait a bit and save more or at least use credit wisely. That my friends is what the economy has done for us. Extend credit and then some.
Unfortunately for some folks, enough is/was never enough. Throw in a few unscrupolous mortgage brokers, credit card approvers, and other commissioned sweet talkers and bingo, the stage is set for collapse.
 
Envy and greed will always, yes always, lead to a downfall.
 
Here is my final thought. Consensus seems to be to produce and buy American. Let me tell you it's hard to do. But you could start by calling/emailing your bank, ISP, insurance company, help desk, ... and letting them know you don't appreciate someone answering the phone in a call center in Bangalore India. You could ask your grocery store to stock up on local produce. You could give your business to local mom and pop stores rather than big chains. You want jobs, services, manufactoring to come back to the USA, ask for it and demand it and vote with your spending power. Trust me, the goverment isn't gonna do it for you and neither is corporate America.
 
Once cent at a time does it. So please do spend a little money if you can and try to spend it into our own (local) economy.
 
All the best to you guys!
 
-Christian.

It's funny that you brought up calling India. I called my credit card company asking them why they raised my % rate by 8% and where did that call go? I talked to 2 people in India. I couldn't believe that so I took out my kids globe and showed them where mommy's call went. DH told me that it's cheaper to go overseas.  The kids thought it was cool that I was talking to someone on the other side of the world, I personally thought it was rediculious.

[AustinBoston]

I'm going to suggest there may be a different root cause.

While there are lots of technical reasons - bad management, greedy people (at all levels), lack of accountability, misplaced power, and more, I think there is one thing that is completely missed.

It starts with a simple premise: All wealth comes from God.  I'm not talking about personal wealth or a business's wealth (though God may sometimes be in that), but the wealth of a nation.  The ability for businesses and individuals to thrive in a thriving economy comes from God.  Both how and why He gives wealth to nations and peoples are beyond us - they serve his purposes, not ours - but He does give some clues.

Now most people who start these kinds of statements then take aim at laws they don't like, immoral businesses, or the "divorce" between God and schools/ government/ courts/etc. or they point to some group they want to blame.  It could be a certain religious group, or an ethnic group, or a social class - anything that can be a scapegoat.  Or they pick on a pet issue - abortion, or taking "under God" out of the the pledge of allegiance, or any of a myriad of other things.

That stuff is all nonsense.  I won't say God does not care about those things, but they are things that He can easily change.  All authority in heaven and on earth comes from Him.  He can and does replace governments and overthrow leaders.  But he does that for His purposes, not ours.

No, focusing on those things is actually part of the problem.  By blaming abortion (pro or con), the proliferation of pornography, breakdown of marriage, government corruption, illegal immigrants, some political action committee, unions, bad management, foreign competition, etc. for our problems, and expecting some church or government to do something (or stop doing something) about it, or even wringing our hands and concluding that nothing can be done, we divorce ourselves from the real issue, and from any personal responsibility.  

The real issue is individuals.  At all levels  of society and all classes and all ethinc groups and all regions of the country, we have forgotten, or worse, ignored God.  And I have come to the conclusion that the worst offenders are those who think they are not offending at all.

I am an active lay leader in my church.  Some of us are going through the process of identifying future leaders.  While we have no shortage of leaders, one of the conclusions we have come to is that about 80% of the people who attend our church do nothing but attend (and usually put money in the plate - but that's not the issue here).  They don't volunteer for anything, they decline when asked, and they don't let church affect their private lives.  For the most part, they don't support or volunteer for other organizations, either.  They think they are believers, but their "belief" makes no difference in their lives.  They would never seek out someone who has fallen away (they won't be involved enough to know who those people are anyway), and they would never reach out to someone who does not know God.  To them, that's the church's job.  I've been around enough and read enough to know we are far from unique; on the contrary, we are typical.

Even among those who do get involved, they often insulate their hearts from what they are doing, so that they don't have to be convicted of their own shortcomings.  They fail to realize (or refuse to accept) that God is the source of the conviction...thereby ignoring God.

I could go on and on, talking about our moral collapse as a people, but most of that stuff is already obvious to all of us.  

What's the solution?  It isn't new laws, new government, an attack on immoral behavior, or the end of the ACLU.

It comes down to one thing.  Do the things I claim to believe make a difference in my life, and do I let them influence the way I think about and act towards those around me - those God Himself put there?  Do I let God use me how He chooses, or do I dictate my intentions and expectations to Him?

Over 20 years ago, I was part of a move to get rid of an adult bookstore that had just opened in town.  There was a lot of fury over it.  There were rallies, marches, meetings, and lawyers.  Pastors counciled together.  Businessmen had meetings.  There were prayer breakfasts, sign-waving picketers, angry letters, newspaper editorials.  It was an election year, and all of the gubernatorial candidates came to the big rally to tell us what we wanted to hear.

I particularly remember one rally held near the end.  It was held on the lawn of a church that had been there for over 200 years.  That rally was within sight of the offending establishment.  There were many hundreds in attendance, perhaps as many as a thousand (far from our best-attended rally, BTW.  These were the "faithful").  Every member of the town's clergy was there.  There were pastors, priests, and rabbis.  Many of them spoke or prayed.  I was excited.

As it ended, the crowd of spectators moved into the street.  Gradually, the people in this group changed from an indignant congregation of sorts into an angry mob.  These people who were just listening to priests and prayers started shouting obsenities.  I saw something I will never forget.  Those who were opposed to the obsenity inside the establishment became a source of it outside.

Within days, a businessman in town bought out the bookstore's lease.  He was gone.  More meetings were held to celebrate what "God" had done, and to plan a strategy to take on the strip club in town.

But I had already come to the conclusion that God didn't do it.  God does not reward people for their sin, but that is what happened.  They guy was paid off to go somewhere else.  Meanwhile, the people who were most strongly opposed to it, including me, had revealed their hypocracy.

At a meeting about the strip club, I started to point out those inconsistencies.  I ended up making a statement - "You will not be rid of Alex's until you reach the people behind it."  A powerful church leader silenced me with a statement that amazes me to this day - "Those people can't be reached."  There is something God can't do, eh?  I have long since moved on, first to another church, then to another part of the country.  It's been more than 20 years, and Alex's is still there.

While I won't go so far as to say that God put the bookstore in town, but he did have his purposes in it being there.  It wasn't to rally the people of the town, and it wasn't so that we could force him out.  All the guy did was to move to another town down the road - another town where God loved the people.  No sin was eliminated.

No, God's purpose was to point out to us that there were people we needed to reach.  But that stuff is difficult, it is messy, and it requires personal involvement.  It is much easier to be part of an angry mob marching in the name of God.  In the name of God, we told God to go to hell, and we believed we were doing the right thing.

One at a time, we each need to examine our beliefs, and compare them to who we are.  Rather than choosing and adjusting our beliefs to match what we think we want or need, we need to seek out what God (not some televangelist, or some emotional email, or even some internet post like this one) says about ourselves, then do - not what is comfortable or what is convenient - but do what God wants us to do.  Even if it costs us everything.  Because one - even one - new believer or brother restored is worth it to Him.

Do you know the parable in the New Testament about the one lost sheep?  There were 99 that were not lost.  But the Good Shepherd leaves behind - abandons - the 99 to go after that ONE lost sheep.  Individuals mean that much to him.

Each of us, as individuals, needs to do what God wants us to do in ourselves, and for our neighbor, and to remain there.  Blaming unions or bad management or failed banks or government bailouts doesn't help, and only accomplishes one thing - it helps us ignore God.

Austin

[Shredder]

Shredder,

You are absolutely right. This is all about taking personal responsibility and also taking action.
QUOTE]

Perhaps you missed the part about not blaming "them". When I do the math all the examples of union greed, graft, laziness do not compare to the examples of corporate greed I can site, yet few get worked up about that. Look at the non-union execs at Enron trading energy futures to drive up the paper profits and in the end drive the company (shareholders and employees)  into the ground those non union execs that dreamed up derivative trading, or encouraged people to spend out of their league for a house (do you remember the phrase "ownership society"? ) Yes, the people who signed for these things are responsible as well. Or the non-union genius who thought up bundling these bad loans and peddling them off for a profit, we win, realtors win, it's all good, right?. These things were allowed to happen because we, you and I fell asleep at the switch. We allowed our elected officials to be bought off by corporations. Corporations found it much better to buy a senator then to make a decent product, surely that is not a union fault. Don't like a regulation, buy a senator to fix it. We shareholders also failed by letting the companies pay themselves outrageous amounts of moola , and these  bonuses we all are talking about now did not happen in a vacume, we allowed it.
And on a more personal level to AustinBoston, we can't really control what other people think or do. We can however control what we do. In the end it's just us and God, or just you and your beliefs whatever they may be.....shredder

[hvac1877]

Dont put the blame on all the unions!!!!! I grew up in a union house hold and i don't belong to a union. Yes the automotive unions did not do the car companys right but alot of the crap we are in started in 1981 when the "great" Pres Regan took oversite and regulation out of the stock market!!!!!!! Allowing these companys to do what they wanted is little to no oversite by the SCC!!! Until companies play buy the rules we be back into this same place!!!!!! Obama was given a terrible mess and he is trying to sort it all out and get things back in order!!! I know government cant solve every problem but they can give a hand out to help stop the slide. We are a very productive country but to many people in this country are to dam lazy to work. I work butt off to provide for my family. Many hours i am working i rather be with my family and seeing my granddaughter growing up. I trying to make the world better for her the best it can be!!! The only thing constant in this world is change and if you cant keep up with change the i feel sorry for you!!! I am sick of people kicking Obama in the ass. It is hard to make chicken soup out of chicken shit! My little rant.

[dthurk]

Some really interesting comments here, thanks all.  I suppose my take on the direction this is going is that companies and unions both can represent the good and the bad in the overall picture of things.  Neither are perfect.  Both are needed and necessary to make business run in this country at this point in time.  Getting rid of unions would accomplish about as much as getting rid of companies.  Another time, another era, things might be different.  Remember, unions were developed initially to counter employer abuses, which were significant at the time.  Unfortunately and sadly, power corrupts.  Either can become overzealous and/or self serving and abuse their position.  That doesn't say much yet for the economy helping me.  I suppose consistent pay raises might count in that column.  It would be nice if the pay raises might be greater than the increase in the cost of living.  That might actually be occurring.  Falling gas prices were a welcome relief.  It's not often we see costs going down that quickly and to that degree.  Thinking along those lines...one might say the world is on sale right now.  Prices do seem to be dropping in some areas.  Now might be the time to buy a big ticket item, for example.  Those who are employed might be doing better right now.  It doesn't seem to be quite so kind to those who are unemployed.  I've been guaranteed my job for the next year at least.  Life goes on.