The oligarchy of bailouts, and why we all lose

Yep.

On the other hand, we tried doing nothing....the year was 1929. This time around might not have a better result but how much worse can it be?

Mr. Daviau --

C'mon. The "last time" was, indeed, the right way to go about it: Natural selection was permitted to eliminate economic weaklings across the entire social spectrum; "this time" we're stacking the deck in favor of them what's got it an' don't deserve it -- not only forcing disaster on those who would have survived if they didn't have to carry the additional load of proven deadbeats, but assuring that the same incompetents will still be in charge if and when we finally get out of this.

Easy to talk tough about eliminating "welfare cheats" when they live in the ghetto -- but when they live on Park Avenue, well ... gotta shovel 'em the moolah, right?

The health of the entire community depends on periodic systemic elimination of cancers of all stripes, mon ami; not on assuring their survival at the cost of healthy organs.

That's just the way it is, Bill.

In 1929 we didn't have an unemployment system like we have now or a welfare state, also 1929 wasn't really that bad. We had a huge bull market rebound before the eventual total collapse that led to the depression. By all measures unemployment is actually worse now that during the Great Depression. It is only a the huge government funded welfare ystem that is keepinng our economy going. As long as people can live being unemployed they will stay that way.

Eventually the tax burden to keep the program going will overwhelm the system and we will have a systematic collapse, the likes of which have never been seen. What is going to happen at the end of the tax year when all these people who have been taking unemployment for months have to pay taxes on the benefits?

There are people that are living better on unemployment right now than they were while they were employed due to medical bills.

Mr. Clikdawg,

You write: The health of the entire community depends on periodic systemic elimination of cancers of all stripes, mon ami; not on assuring their survival at the cost of healthy organs.

So if there is a cancer in the lungs or heart we should eliminate those organs in favor of the healthy ones? How does that help the patient?

GM is the heart and lungs of what is left of the American manufacturing center. Many more people work for GM suppliers than work for GM. We lose GM we lose American Manufacturing and complete the slide into an economy wherein we are all saying "Do you want fries with that?"

Bill --

And you think keeping those deceased heart and lungs on permanent life-support benefits the patient?

How you gonna pay for that, amigo? If we are to subsidize the lifestyles GM owners, management, and workers while others' lifestyles are destoyed as a result, there will not be enough consumers left able to buy what GM produces in the quantities necessary to get GM off of life support: The patient then vegetates and is better off dead.

Look. That which is not growing is dying. We have pissed away our manufacturing base, and need to rebuild it (if we're going to) from the ground up -- painful as that might seem -- based on the original economic premise that he who produces what people want at a price they can afford wins. This can't be done as long as the whole [remaining!] economic might of the nation is tied up in supporting entrenched bloat, inefficiency, and corruption.

Cottage automobile industries sound too hard a row to hoe? Well, that's how Ford and GM started out, my friend, and they did well as long as they hewed to the lessons learned while building from the bottom up -- lessons which will not and cannot be learned from a privileged position on a gummint-guaranteed hilltop.

It is not enough to mourn the impending loss of those auto-related jobs while accepting those already incurred: Why should the participants in any failed venture be indemnified from flippin' burgers? Once we're all in the same boat, the cream can rise to the top again -- not just the bastards.

In short, I do not accept your emotional plea on behalf of "what is left of the American manufacturing center" -- a center which will not re-expand on life-support, only vegetate and destroy what's left of the American social base.

Time we got back to an old American tradition: No special treatment.

For anyone.

"Since the onset of the financial crisis nine months ago...."

The market has reacted rather well since then

Clikdawg,

You say the American tradition is no special treatment for anyone.

I hope you don't believe that. We have a "Federal Reserve" system that is not run by the government, it is run by the banking sector. We have laws on the books that require government buildings to be built by union labor. We have a tax system that taxes return on capital investment at a much lower rate than workers pay on their earnings. We have a system of government wherein money buys influence even to the point that foreign nations lobby for their share of our foreign assistance. What world are you living in? There is special treatment everywhere.

What is wrong with the economy right now is that we provide too much special treatment to foreign manufacturers. We would rather buy cheap clothes made by child labor in Bangladesh than pay a fair price for American clothes. We tell our manufacturing workers to "compete" with labor in Mexico that is paid $1.50 per hour, oh and by the way, pay for your own darn medical care and pay taxes to your locality to support the schools and fire protection and police and don't pollute like they do in Mexico and be a good citizen.

I recently went to buy a new Lincoln automobile and found that they were all made in Mexico. It makes sense to me, free trade and all, let American workers live on $60.00 a week like the Mexicans do....then we'll rebuild our manufacturing sector.

America was doing just fine in the world before "free trade" undermined the working people. In 1965 we controlled 63% of all the worlds manufacturing. What do you think the number is today?

Re: Special treatment.

That's the egalitarian tradition that the country was built on, as opposed to the hash that has been made of it since the founding of The Reserve.

Don't blame me for that.

You wanna get rid of so-called "free trade", that's fine with me -- but until the day you do, the global wage situation you describe is a reality; and if the rest of the nation has to take a wage cut, so does the UAW.

You cannot bring back higher wages by having one segment of the wage-earning public get their accustomed slice of the pie while everyone else goes hungry.

I was raised a Union Man in a Union town, and I've belonged to both the Teamsters and (chuckle) the Musician's Union. And loathe as I am to say it, the Union Movement as a whole in this country has become exactly the same sort of organization it fought so hard against in the 30s -- and it is collapsing of its own misdirected weight. Make no mistake: The Union ideal has not been outgrown, but the form it now assumes in the US has doomed it to one of two possible courses -- it can radically reform itself or perish. If it goes down, employer/employee relations will revert rapidly to what they were in the 30s -- but saving it in its present form only adds another layer of the corruption that is choking us all.

The unions -- like everything else -- will have to be purged and rebuilt from scratch to return the real power to the actual worker rather than the mega-bureaucracies and the organized crime syndicates that control them now; and they will have to be rebuilt world-wide this time to avoid falling into the cheap-labor-abroad trap we now find ourselves in.

Yeah. Grim. But that's how things shape up.

Not my idea, amigo. Not my druthers. Just my prediction based on trends already pretty well set in stone. The UAW (and the bankers, and the insurance companies, etc.) can strong-arm the rest of the nation into paying up for awhile, but in the long run they'll succumb to the same international pressures their countrymen now face -- and as a result of that strong-arming they will wake up one day to find that they have forfeited their friends, neighbors, and the good-will that will be necessary for survival in the coming Neo-Feudal world.

Again -- don't shoot the messenger, compadre ... and have a real pleasant evenin', y'heah?

By the way, Bill -- were you actually arguing that you SHOULD get special treatment?

Do you really believe that?

Clikdawg,

You write: By the way, Bill -- were you actually arguing that you SHOULD get special treatment?

Do you really believe that?

Response:
Everyone gets some kind of "special treatment." I am an inventor and the way it works is that the government gives me a grant to invent, I license the technology to an American firm, they have the product made in China. I benefit from low manufacturing cost aided by currency manipulation by the Chinese.

Cotton is subsidized, buy a yacht and get free Coast Guard services, buy a private plane and get free air traffic control support and then land at subsidized airports. We have Medicare for our old age and a host of programs for the poor.

Advanced civilizations don't encourage their citizens to think that they live in a bubble and that they only get what they earn. Go earn your living in Somalia. Without the support of your nation you are nothing.

So, uh, Bill -- if you yourself make money off the selling out of the American worker, how come you're so worried about our manufacturing base? And why shouldn't the rest of us "make money" (or rather, retain what we've already got) by turning our backs on GM?

Really, most of us do not consider your Lincoln -- or all those yachts and private planes you talk about that get free passes -- to be in quite the same category as, say ... food; and if they were to take it all away from you there wouldn't be a wet eye in the house.

Thanks for finding yet another creative way to say: "Let 'em eat cake!"

Clikdawg writes:

Really, most of us do not consider your Lincoln -- or all those yachts and private planes you talk about that get free passes -- to be in quite the same category as, say ... food; and if they were to take it all away from you there wouldn't be a wet eye in the house.

Thanks for finding yet another creative way to say: "Let 'em eat cake!"

Response:

I was saying that that the "special treatment" should be spent on the working people not on the rich. Your response was not well thought out. I do think that the wealthy should be taxed at high rates as they were in the seventies and early eighties and that we all owe much to the fact that we live in a country that allows us to earn more than we need. I do not subscribe to the notion that everyone gets what they deserve or even what they need.

Clikdawg writes:

So, uh, Bill -- if you yourself make money off the selling out of the American worker, how come you're so worried about our manufacturing base?

It is not legal for me to require that my inventions be made in the USA or I would...part of the free trade law.

The unions -- like everything else -- will have to be purged and rebuilt from scratch to return the real power to the actual worker rather than the mega-bureaucracies and the organized crime syndicates that control them now;