[quote=Rt.66][quote=CA renter][quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
What strikes me as being conspicuously absent as of late, is the desire of many Americans to work at all. That’s where this magical thinking comes in. Invest in the internet and make millions! Buy a house and make millions! Stuff envelopes part time in your den and make millions!
And when these folks don’t make millions, or lose their ass on a really bad RE (or tech) investment, they turn into victims and expect someone to bail them out. We’re all victims and we live in a culture of entitlement.
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That’s probably because we’ve spent the past few decades denigrating working people (down with the “lazy” union workers…how dare those worthless bums ask for a higher minimum wage, etc.) while putting “dealmakers” (CEOs, politicians, financiers, etc.) on a pedestal — note how wealth has been transferred over this time. When the working masses see the wealth divide grow like it has, they figure they either have to jump into whatever is making the rich people rich, or doom themselves and their families to poverty. The “middle-class” lifestyle has slipped further and further away from most people’s reach, and they are panicking.
It’s much more difficult these days for people to work their way up via real work. Very few workers can support their families in the same way their counterparts could thirty years ago.
So…we get what we reward. A bunch of scammers trying to find new ways of separating other people from their money. You can’t blame Joe Sixpack for trying.[/quote]
Well said CA Renter. This is a glaring problem in the US. In my view corporate masters and the elite have somehow managed a mass brainwashing. Most Americans look at good union jobs as a negative. CEOs love this and perpetuate it; believe it. I have never been in a union, however its as plain to me as the nose on my face that us “workers” benefit from collective bargaining and also that non-union jobs benefit as well.
Workers will always need to unite to fight for fairnes with the elite. They do not put a human face on workers, you are just numbers, dollars, output.
The US is in a phase where all the hard work done by unions in the 50’s and 60’s is forgotten. Most today think corpoarations simply decided to start providing fair wages and benefits on their own.
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Scarlet: Unfortunately, your comment leaves a lot out regarding the history of unions and the auto industry. Much of the problem springs from paying someone $70,000 a year to perform a job a trained monkey could do. You mention CBAs (collective bargaining agreements). Have you looked at some of those CBAs? Both the AFL-CIO and UAW have effectively “priced themselves” out of the competitive labor market as a result of self-destructive bargaining postures and nearly insane demands regarding wages, pensions and benefits.
The so-called legacy costs that accompany most American vehicles are a result of management caving in to demands that they couldn’t afford. The problem was, the work stoppages that would have resulted from strikes would have hurt more.
I don’t disagree that unions have changed the landscape for workers and, on balance, for the positive. However, from the mid-1970s onward, this has not been the case.
