Whatever your job is, if the wage you earn is not sustainable by the company or the industry it's in, then sitting on your fat ass and screaming about how unfair it all is, is besides the point. I'd like to assert that my job is worth a quarter mil a year. I demand that it is. But it's not. And there's not one single company on the planet who will pay me that. Now if through some strange confluence of events I managed to wrangle that concession from my company and low and behold, after a few years they couldn't afford it, the rational response would be to renegotiate that. Because more than zero is a higher number than zero.

For every attempt management makes at breaking the union, the union is playing an equally dangerous game of attempting to extract as much cash as possible out of the company before it goes broke. See no one is really interested in the long run viability, no one. Not the unions OR management. No one.

They will buy up one or two of the big three and the will reorganize the shit out of them. They will make vehicles that not only do people want but are financially sustainable to the companies that make them.

Detroit tried a German 'quality' partnership with Daimler. But Daimler's aims were to use cheap Chrysler internals and manufacturing to cut costs on their premium Daimler lines. All they wound up with were crappy Mercedes Benz models that fell apart and a bunch of Chrysler Musclecar minivans that were even crappier.

The key is to have a Korean company or even Tata (India) come in apply their quality and value techniques to the Big 3. The Detroit companies don't have to worry about brand affinity anymore because only fanboys LIKE their stuff. For everyone else, you buy an American vehicle that is ALREADY cheaper than its corresponding Japanese car. And they still can't sell them. That's how bad they suck. So an Asian company can come in and work from the bottom up.

And while this happens the UAW will become irrelevant, wages will come down but the total number of employed workers will be stable. If line workers are STILL demanding high wage increases AND guaranteed employment then they are delusional.

In NC in 2008, Google, Lenovo, Fed Ex and Dell were denied hundreds of millions of tax breaks in exchange for a faint promise of jobs.

Why? Because homeowners are done with taking it in the neck and then those companies never come through with the number of jobs they promised anyhow. To saddle a county with a few hundred millions dollars in new taxes for 1500 jobs, well people aren't tolerating that anymore.

So while BMW might catch a plant closing and some jobs loss, I for one can only be happy because if they can't make their employment goals then the county is supposed to get a rebate and the homeowners get a break.

I really wish someone at Salon knew thing one about local politics and local economies.

All of them. Do away with all government completely. Let everyone fight it out in the jungle.

Because that would be hilarious.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/05/real_estate/bail_outs_fair_or_foul/index.htm?postversion=2008120510

I should have been an illegal alien deadbeat fruitpicker. The worst that could happen is YOU PEOPLE get to pay my mortgage for me.

Local and State taxes are breaking our backs so that some company can swoop in and claim that at some undefined day in the distant future they'll create 1500 jobs. Screw them

Counterrevolutionary and opposed to the Great Man Hugo Chavez.

How is this different from Nevada representatives taking a stance of Yucca Flats? Or California representatives taking a stance on coal and nuclear power? Isn't representing their constituencies kinda sorta their job?

Would probably die of pulmonary edema while huffing on your $5,000 Trek bikes at high altitudes of Colombia.

Viva La Revolucion! (at sea level)

In fact we should set absolute fixed wages for every job in America. As well as all prices, for everything. It would save us the complication of worrying about population migrations for the most part, for economic reasons, citizen.

The Jews. Nothing else even exists. There is no Pakistan. Focus on the Jews.

Is the broken muffler on the Salon tofu solar powered buggy scraping and sparking on pavement. We've pretty much hit bottom and it's time for all you slackers to get out and push.

Then the railroads, the steel companies, the homebuilders. Even foreign countries are lining up for a handout. Don't worry, money is free and infinite.

On how much we suck. Save the whales.

That simply pays off cronies and nationalizes whatever pays off the most people no matter how poorly it's run.

Violators will be beheaded in the town square.

If it means we save the unions. I say impose a 100% tax on all incomes in order to bail out all the faltering car companies.

Stupid white people blah blah kill the rich blah blah I don't own a tv blabbity blah blah I only watch PBS and Desperate Housewives and some other drunk sluts blah blah vampires blah blah Friday night Galactica blah blah.

Just sayin,

But they busy trying to make the best of it.

Though they were all self referential boring crap.

You are always free to not spend a dime, or at least a dime on those things you personally object to. But once you start screeching at everyone else to dumpster dive, collect boxes and live in them in the gutter to assuage your rage, you start sounding like possibly the stupidest people on the planet.

Recent purchases:

3 old DVD's from Amazon

1 cosmetics kit from Amazon

1 set of 2 prong pulley pullers from Harbor Freight Tools

1 visit to the Vet

1 visit to the dentist for new crown

1 high powered LED flashlight

1 wireless router

Ride through the sea foam on a golden sea horse, trident in hand?

What were they doing?