Educate me please

[Schlepstream]

I was a union worker for over 15 years. When I left the union my standard of living increased. I will never (I know never say never) work as a union employee again as long as I live. I have no use for the blood suckers. If you want a lesson in nepotism and favoritism just join a union. If you want someone else to control your ability to prosper at all levels join a union. I have no use for them. As far as the UAW, just look at how automated they are now. I think that is indicative of how the corporate leaders feel about the workers. They have whined, cried and "demanded" their way out of their jobs. It's nothing more than assembly, I wouldn't pay someone over $25.00 an hour for that. Sorry.

[blues2cruise]

I agree not all unions are good. In our case, we needed the union. We kept our jobs and our pensions and our benefits., etc. If not forthe union, we would have lost some of our work to contracting out to a foreign country, rollbacks., etc.......

[tcreeley]

In the 60's the wages were proportionately higher than they are today (purchasing power) thanks to the Unions. One good salary was all you needed to support a family. Today both spouses have to work to get by. Then corporations started sending work and jobs overseas - Hong Kong, Japan, anywhere where people worked for less. It was for profit because the only products sold in the US were sold bu US companies- no international competition. Then NAFTA and Cafta and world trade and global capitalism got going. Our jobs were sent overseas and they made sure that we didn't have trade protections to save jobs. That would have killed the big profits. The standard of living fell along with the purchasing power of a dollar. Today we compete with the Chinese getting paid 50 cents an hour. That is where we are headed. It's not because of the Unions. It is because the big corporations want more profit. Last year we had the worst unemployed in a long time and an increase in the number of millionaires. What is wrong with this picture? Global capitalism and corporations doesn't care about living wages and responsibility to communities. They are there to make money. If someone will work for less than the Chinese- then they are in trouble to.

[blues2cruise]

In the 60's the wages were proportionately higher than they are today (purchasing power) thanks to the Unions. One good salary was all you needed to support a family. Today both spouses have to work to get by. Then corporations started sending work and jobs overseas - Hong Kong, Japan, anywhere where people worked for less. It was for profit because the only products sold in the US were sold bu US companies- no international competition. Then NAFTA and Cafta and world trade and global capitalism got going. Our jobs were sent overseas and they made sure that we didn't have trade protections to save jobs. That would have killed the big profits. The standard of living fell along with the purchasing power of a dollar. Today we compete with the Chinese getting paid 50 cents an hour. That is where we are headed. It's not because of the Unions. It is because the big corporations want more profit. Last year we had the worst unemployed in a long time and an increase in the number of millionaires. What is wrong with this picture? Global capitalism and corporations doesn't care about living wages and responsibility to communities. They are there to make money. If someone will work for less than the Chinese- then they are in trouble to.

That is why I try to buy products from my own country. I am mostly successful.

[High_Side]

In the 60's the wages were proportionately higher than they are today (purchasing power) thanks to the Unions. One good salary was all you needed to support a family. Today both spouses have to work to get by. Then corporations started sending work and jobs overseas - Hong Kong, Japan, anywhere where people worked for less. It was for profit because the only products sold in the US were sold bu US companies- no international competition. Then NAFTA and Cafta and world trade and global capitalism got going. Our jobs were sent overseas and they made sure that we didn't have trade protections to save jobs. That would have killed the big profits. The standard of living fell along with the purchasing power of a dollar. Today we compete with the Chinese getting paid 50 cents an hour. That is where we are headed. It's not because of the Unions. It is because the big corporations want more profit. Last year we had the worst unemployed in a long time and an increase in the number of millionaires. What is wrong with this picture? Global capitalism and corporations doesn't care about living wages and responsibility to communities. They are there to make money. If someone will work for less than the Chinese- then they are in trouble to.

It's difficult for me to see exactly how things were so much better in the 60s, although I was not around back then. If you look at standards of living with the average house being twice as big, people owning more cars, and TOYS (there is no way that people had anything that would compare with all of the ATVs, boats etc....that we have now), things seem much better now. My perception is that standards have also grown, and there is a whole bunch more WANT out there creating expectations far beyond what people used to have.

Protectionism is also a scary thing. Closing up your borders to only "buy domestic" comes with penalty of not being able to export product too. And while a closed economy may make you feel warm and fuzzy for a short period, the rest of the world moves on, learning how to be more competitive and being forced to learn how to do it better. If you lament the loss of the purchasing power of your dollar, wait until you close down your borders and see what happens....

Big corporations want profit, and acheving them ensures that they can continue to exist. Individuals also want profit and if they can't find it being employed by the big corporations they should form their own company and look for it there. The great part about capitalism is the freedom to do it for yourself. The crappy part about protectionism is it kills this opportunity.

Rant over

[csspostal]

Go Cuba

[tcreeley]

In Maine people are generally struggling. They don't have the toys or the big house. I teach. In the last 5 years I've stated to see homeless families and people living out of shelters and small campers heated by kerosene without any running water. The 60's had its share of tar-paper shacks and the "war on poverty" addressed that. Twenty-five years ago there were no homeless in Bangor. Today there are close to a thousand any given day. The factories have gone. Dexter shoe- gone, auto parts factory - furniture- gone, MBNA- gone. That is capitalism at work. The dollar store is the place to shop. In the 1970's, a dollar was worth 7x what it is today. It bought more. People worked fewer hours to support a family. It is the credit card that brought the "supersize" to reality, not a better economy. Consumers began to use the credit card as the dollar became worth - less.

A closed border would have allowed our computer industry to remain vibrant - IBM etc. Enter under-paid worker global capitalism and we compete with China, Japan, Korea and then we nolonger have a computer industry. After-all, we purchased the lions' share of computers!
We will never compete globally, even though our worker productivity is the highest ever - even robotic factories can't compete with 50 cent hourly wage for workers. Our children don't have parents at home - like they did in the 1960's & 1970's. Everyone is working. That isn't a better standard of living. And I don't want to shop at the dollar store for cheap stuff that some poor soul around the world probably made in some toxic poisonous factory.

Give me Union made and tariffs any day!