Comments | boztopia: The Day The American Economy Stood Still

boztopia

The Day The American Economy Stood Still

Dec 12, 2008 18:12

http://boztopia.com/?p=439 $700 billion, american businesses, art, auto industry, automakers, bad news, bailout, bankruptcy, bob corker, business, cable news, ceos, Congress, conservative, credit, culmination, GOP, gop members, green, greenspan, hollowed, Home Depot, honest money, honest work ( Read more... )

environment, law of the jungle, pollution, economy, technology, downturn, progressivism, media, uncategorized, stupid things i read on the internets, disaster, openness, republicans

Comments 15

mirage897 December 12 2008, 18:26:39 UTC

I might take some flak for this but honestly I have little sympathy for people who make $50+ an hour with high school diplomas and make double what their global counterparts do. I would not lose sleep if they took half a pay cut.

quetzalcoatl_9 December 12 2008, 18:50:03 UTC

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

The UAW as part of it's bending over backward for the CEO's instituted a second-tier wage of $14.50 an hour for new hires. That's less than starting wage for non-unionized labor south of Detroit.

And even if someone had worked a long time in the industry and was making $50 an hour, why don't they deserve it? What, experience doesn't matter? Fire them for some unskilled illegals?

From an op-ed in the Detroit News:

For 30 years, politicians have bowed to Wall Street, sitting by while wages for most workers stagnated. Big Three workers have maintained their living standards better than most, in no small part because they have a union. In a country where investment bankers gave themselves $30 billion in bonuses last Christmas, have we reached a point where $58,000 a year with benefits is too much to ask?

Well apparently for you, it is.

LOL boztopia December 12 2008, 19:08:15 UTC

I knew I wouldn't even be able to compose my reply before Aaron came out with guns blazing ( ... )

Re: LOL quetzalcoatl_9 December 12 2008, 19:19:02 UTC

I'm sorry for my vitriol. I'm kinda nutty like that about labor issues.

Thread 10

purpletempest December 12 2008, 19:44:33 UTC

I'm still trying to make up my mind about unions. I feel like they are increasingly becoming as obsolete and unsustainable as the industries that they are part of. The more jobs in the service and information sectors, the less relevance that they have to American society EXCEPT in the case of the Big 3 ( ... )

Bioshock and culture shock boztopia December 12 2008, 20:31:30 UTC

I haven't played the game, but I heard that it was deliberately designed to satirize the lunatic extremes many Randians claim they want. As Teresa Nielsen-Hayden said recently, when systems collapse, the result isn't a pure capitalist meritocracy, but a return to tribalism where warlords rule, and these pasty-faced Objectivist motherfuckers will be the first to get rolled ( ... )

Re: Bioshock and culture shock quetzalcoatl_9 December 12 2008, 21:50:53 UTC

The IT culture is filled with libertarians who think they got where they are only by the efforts of their own genius, and that there was nothing else in the world that helped them. It's myopic. I think a lot of IT people are borderline autistic. I have a friend of a friend who thinks this way, except he slept on his girlfriend's couch for a few years while he got his shit together. Oh yeah, way to go Mr. Rand, your own bootstraps you say!

For serious boztopia December 13 2008, 00:26:23 UTC

A lot of them make valuable philosophical points that are worth listening to, but it's mixed in with this lunatic craziness that really boils down to venerating the cult of the individual over all else. You could write books (and many have) about the curious intersection of the IT industry with this kind of cultural bent.

In a time where we're finally beginning to remember the power of collective action, stuff like that is just not worth listening to anymore.

Thread 5