What is it that makes it so difficult for workers to unite and shut down whole GM ? Shouldn't it be easy in the age of social media and Internet ? Is it fear ? Are corporate executives masters in divide and conquer ?

The fate of unions is connected to economics. Unions did well when there was more demand for workers than supply, and management had no choice but to compromise. The addition of China and India to the global labor force, though, and the degree to which mechanization can and does replace workers, altered the balance of power.

If workers strike today, they lose their jobs to other workers. That's the world we live in; it is why unions are weak and strikes don't work out well. In the GM case, workers can't effectively strike since the company is already eliminating their jobs.

The workers cannot force consumers to buy Chevy sedans. I think Chevy makes very nice sedans, but they are apparently not what consumers want. GM buyers want trucks, SUVs, and crossovers. So the plants that make sedans such as the Chevy Cruze are closing.

Of course, the lack of ability of GMs upper management to predict consumer trends will likely not impact their bonuses. Their Christmases will not be ruined.

Baltimore is losing a plant and about 500 jobs. One worker that was interviewed was rather philosophical about it. He's willing to move wherever the jobs are. Not happy about it, but willing.

GM is now a Chinese company.

profits? But how good are they in context?

Companies need to make profits commensurate with equity and debt investment.

I don't know what it is like in the USA but here in the UK, many large companies (and hence large employers) operate with continued debt and equity fund raising despite seemingly making profits.

The debt liabilities end up building up and up and so they need to ne making growing profits to be able to return money eventually to debt holders. Share holders usually get stuffed and lose everything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2018 06:24AM by Zeezromp.

1. Why would anyone want to shut down GM?

2. What does this have to do with mormonism?

When the product isn't selling it makes no sense to keep making it. Striking doesn't sell cars.

The auto industry is set for a major shakeup.

Smaller cars aren't selling

Young people aren't learning to drive at the rates of earlier generations.

Individual car ownership is predicted to decrease.

Striking doesn't change the demand for cars either.The union is in a very weak position this time.

We still like our big cars here in the US. I spent about a month in the UK recently and it seemed to me that the most popular car was the Ford Fiesta. A family care there but considered tiny here.

Ford Fiesta is the number 1 selling car in the UK in 2018. So your perceptions are accurate.

Edit: Apparently the Fiesta is the biggest selling car in the UK ever.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2018 12:49PM by Darren Steers.

...apparently, the laid off, full-time Union workers will have the option to bump temps at the non-closing GM plants. But that might mean relocation for a good number of them. Hope GM doesn't screw the pooch here, focusing on full EV or autonomous exclusively. I suppose their forward-looking game plan is taking all this into consideration. Chevy Volt abandoned, Bolt moves ahead.....battery prices have also come down.

https://qz.com/1474677/gm-kills-the-chevrolet-volt-as-plug-in-hybrids-lose-market-share/

https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/fort-wayne-gm-temp-workers-nervous-about-company-layoffs/1621091180

Companies don't exist to pay employees. They exist to make money for the owners.
If there is no profit above expenses (including labor), then the owners will invest their monies elsewhere.

A rise in costs played a significant role in this case. In particular, the tariffs on steel increased the cost of building autos. That undermined profits and forced the closures.

GM needed to make a lot of changes, but those could have been implemented by retooling the US factories to produce better models. The problem was the higher steel prices which made the transition uneconomical. So now GM will expand output of better cars in other countries, where labor, raw materials, or both are less expensive.

GM and their executives just got a massive tax break and what do they do to repay their country to show their loyalty to the system that helped them keep their profits? They move outside of the US.

This is proof that massive tax breaks for corporations don't "trickle down". In the end corporations are greedy and they don't care about anyone but themselves.

Take our own cult for example. They don't care who they hurt or what trials and tribulations their followers go through. They just want to keep the tithing money streaming in and that's about it.

Praydude,

You are right that corporate executives generally only care about their own remuneration and hence returns to investors. It is also true that corporate tax breaks usually do not "trickle down" to workers. But it was Washington (the Bush administration) that formulated the bailout, flaws and all; and afterward GM fulfilled its obligations ahead of schedule. That deal was closed on terms better than the government expected.

The situation now is different. Put simply, the government cannot expect a company to run at a loss lest the entire enterprise go bankrupt and all its employees lose their jobs. Virtually anyone with their mutual funds or indexes in their retirement accounts must also want GM to survive.

That is why current US policy right now is so deeply flawed. Tariffs on steal and other metals raise the cost of cars, and the losses are shared by consumers and the manufacturers themselves. For weaker companies, like GM, those losses can prove fatal. Lest there be any question about how the firm should react, the newly "reformed" tax code also gives preferential treatment to companies that move production abroad. So that is what any number of them are doing.

If you dislike that outcome, as I do, the immediate answer is to return to a tax code that doesn't penalize domestic manufacturing. Once that is done, by all means let's proceed to address the flaws in corporate governance. But that too is determined by the legal and regulatory systems, so we are again back at politics and policy.

And yes, I agree that the LDS church is just another amoral corporation.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2018 03:05AM by Lot's Wife.

OT
but note how Germany is throwing their Diesel cars on the American market.
Hence all the Benz vehicles you see all of a sudden.

Diesel vehicles will be severely restricted in Deutschland.

VW has been storing their diesel auto around the country, something about not meeting mileage and pollution standards.

Check out the aerial view of the abandoned nuclear power plant between Aberdeen and Olympia Washington. I.e., Grays Harbor Power. Tens of thousands of cars.


https://www.google.com/maps/@46.9692928,-123.4817589,16z/data=!3m1!1e3

Marriott employees are striking in several cities and getting concessions. So there's that.

Fortunately for the hard-pressed Marriott employees, you can't move an American hotel to China, India, or Vietnam.

Gov't jobs such as transit driver, maintenance employment & some clerical type positions are the strong side of union membership. Nurses, teachers, & other skilled careers included.

here in PNW, anti-union Walmart stores & online shopping is cutting into union retail jobs.


Blue-collar resentment of gov't employee unions grows as manufacturing careers disappear.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2018 02:08PM by GNPE.

This is a complex issue.

In addition to the DPRK style anto union propaganda films many employers force new hires to watch, a lot has happened behind the scenes.

Many labor disputes are forced to mandatory arbitration-with the employer paying the arbitrator and blackballing them from the industry for an infavorable ruling.

The “old guard” political party that claims to be the working peoples party has many members that sit on the boards of directors of these fiercely anti union companies-Hillary on the Walmart’s board of directors, and Al Gore on Apple’s comes to mind.

The politicians have photo ops encouraging new union participation while behind the scenes enabling anti union legislation.

The mandatory forced arbitration has also extended to consumers, through binding user agreements, under which unwitting consumers waive their right to sue. The worst famous example might be consumers “agreeing” to the user agreement of Gateway Computers by opening the fifth box.

From an employment perspective this will get worse. American workers are competing with third world labor, and slave like labor laws.

As automation continues to destroy jobs, more labor is forced to compete in an increasingly contracting job market. Business exploits this, as they become more automated, more exploitive of desparate communities in demanding tax breaks, and are forced to increase profits every quarter to satisfy the financial markets.

This will become much worse when self driving vehicles completely destroy the labor market.

Small businesses should consider encouraging labor friendly policies. They should comsider this labor is quite often their customer base, as well as a part of their community’s tax base.

We need long term thinking in this country rather than this quarters earnings.

Gheco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Small businesses should consider encouraging labor
> friendly policies. They should comsider this labor
> is quite often their customer base, as well as a
> part of their community’s tax base.

Big businesses should, too.
After all, what good is it to make a cool, expensive iPhone (or whatever), and only have 1% of people be able to buy it? Companies that aren't labor-friendly are largely shooting themselves in their long-term feet.

It's been a very, very long time since I took comparative politics, but that was the case at one point. The ratio of CEO to worker comp was much closer than in the US.

Anyway, I was a union steward for ~a year. It was very rewarding but also crazy making.

I was deeply affected when I learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. People continue to work under such conditions today.

Read about the horrible fire and wonder how come Betty Smith doesn't mention it in her "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" novel.
Or does she?

I was very little when my mom used to read it to us in the evenings, and have of course read it on my own since then. Can't remember any mention of it, although it happened in 1911.
Haven't compared the translation with the original, though.

How long have you been following the labor movement?
How long has it been following you is the question.

M@t

Headline ... "Trump orders GM to keep unproductive factories open."

GM is just a chess piece. A fairly valuable one, true, but just one piece.

When Nixon opened China, American business leaders were ecstatic. "Just think of the China market--a billion customers to sell to!" Things turned out differently. China exploited their billion not as customers to American production, but as cheap labor to undercut American manufacturing, while protecting their economy with tariffs. American finance ("Wall Street") adjusted, and started making easy profits by facilitating Chinese imports, to the detriment of the US production base ("Main Street").

Trump is changing the channel in and out of the economic harbor. I see GM as big and cumbersome, like the proverbial aircraft carrier. GM CEO Mary Barra needs to throw the wheel hard and fast to get her corporate behemoth inside the buoys that Trump relocated. Perhaps she's thinking that Trump will be gone in two years, and a new administration may put the buoys back the way she (and Wall Street) want them. It's a big bet. Bet wrong, and she runs GM aground. Unlike 2008, the willingness to send taxpayer-paid tugboats to rescue GM is not there.

Attention Lot's Wife: the price of steel certainly factors in, but is not a determining factor. For one thing, US-sourced steel is increasing. The real issue is sourcing of parts (including steel), location of manufacture of completed vehicles, and markets. Trump's goal is reduced overseas parts, increased vehicle manufacture in the US, and export of completed vehicles overseas.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Attention Lot's Wife: the price of steel certainly
> factors in, but is not a determining factor. For
> one thing, US-sourced steel is increasing.

That would be great, except the US-sourced steel goes for the same price (or more than) imported steel. 'Cause the US steel makers charge the going market rate, which is higher than it used to be because of...tariffs.

And it's not increasing very much...

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/08/raw-data-us-steel-production-since-the-end-of-the-recession/

The trend in increasing steel prices is offset, somewhat, by the decreased use of steel in cars. A recent article posted on gasbuddy.com* points out the drop in car sales is also explained by increased longevity in automobile life--people need to replace them less often. That, and an increase (or should I call that an "un-decrease"?) in good-quality used vehicles in the national inventory.

*gasbuddy.com is a hand phone app, which lets you check fuel prices, as reported by members, in your area. If you register, you can post prices yourself and help other consumers.

Caffiend,

We all know about the decreasing use of steel in autos and the increased lifespan of autos. Those are baked into the data.

What was not baked in was a sharp increase in the price of the metals that are still used in cars. The costs are here, the profits are gone, and the auto manufacturers are in trouble and will shift production abroad at the new price levels.

Long-term trends of the sort you indicate don't produce sudden changes. Radical policy departures do that.

> Attention Lot's Wife: the price of steel certainly
> factors in, but is not a determining factor. For
> one thing, US-sourced steel is increasing. The
> real issue is sourcing of parts (including steel),
> location of manufacture of completed vehicles, and
> markets. Trump's goal is reduced overseas parts,
> increased vehicle manufacture in the US, and
> export of completed vehicles overseas.

Caffiend, this is a question of basic trade economics: if you raise the cost of an input in your country alone, your manufacturers suffer. That is what tariffs do. They take money from domestic companies and give it to the government.

The increase in steel and aluminum prices is not global; it only occurred in the US. All the auto manufacturers warned of this when the tariffs were announced, and now they are all reporting significantly lower profits because of increased costs. In GM's case, the losses were $1 billion so far.

This in no way leads to more jobs in the US. The cost of steel does not go up in other countries. If American producers, which are higher cost because of labor here, expand their output of metals and parts, the burden still falls on the auto manufacturers because the price level is higher than on global markets. You will get somewhat more jobs in the steel industry, but they will be more than swamped by permanent losses in the auto sector--and the parts industry won't expand because it, like the car companies, must now pay the same higher prices for steel due to the same tariffs. The net change in employment in the US will be negative.

What will US consumers do now that American cars will sell for $4-6,000 dollars more? Buy European and Japanese cars, whose prices have not risen, so American wages and jobs cannot improve. What will US manufacturers do now that the cost of inputs have increased? Move factories abroad, where metals are 25% cheaper. That change is now occurring, and it is permanent because once the factories are built the cost of shutting them down is prohibitive.

This isn't advanced economics. The experiment has been tried many, many times.

Although "Russian collusion" gets all the attention, Trump's focus is on China: 1) it has the world's 2nd largest economy and 2) is expansionist without apology (e.g. "China Road and Belt"). The US has suffered negative balance of payments for generations, In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, it was US "petrodollars" siphoned off to the Middle East (or other oil sources).

Now it's the Far East, first Japan and the Pacific rim, then China which ramped up industry based upon cheap labor. The negative balance of payments is now tilted to Asia and, especially, China. An economics maxim is, "Something which can't go on forever, won't," and that applies to the depletion of US capital. Overlooked in this is that, contrary to the Kissinger-Nixon hypothesis, China remained a top-down (party/oligarchic) economy and hostile state, and did not "evolve" into a liberal democracy.

This, I believe, is the Trump agenda. Trump calls himself anti-tariff (long-term), but the US has been shut out of the Chinese market by THEIR protective tariffs. Trump is conducting economic warfare, which will have casualties, and GM just got bloodied ("friendly fire?"). But investing in Chinese production put GM "in harm's way."

Certain industries, companies, and sectors will have painful adjustments to make, but Trump's goal is protecting US production while it ramps up. Tariffs are the (short term) means to that end.

Last: I think a lot of Trump's baffoonery is conscious distraction, like the cat chasing the laser dot. From the non-political oilprice.com, we see what an economics-based (as opposed to political or military) approach has quietly done to a nefarious Iranian/Russian/Syrian oil cabal which supplies Assad with oil and cash for Hezbollah and Hamas. An interesting read:

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Stopping-Syrias-Oil-Smuggling-Scheme.html

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Although "Russian collusion" gets all the
> attention, Trump's focus is on China: 1) it has
> the world's 2nd largest economy and 2) is
> expansionist without apology (e.g. "China Road and
> Belt").

Russian collusion and opposition to China are not mutually exclusive. As for expansionism, it's difficult to fault China for increasing its access to global markets. What is unfortunate is that the US withdrawal from TPP enabled China to take the lead--Washington accelerated Beijing's rise--and, ironically, to portray itself as the champion of free trade. Equally ironically, China's claims are accurate now that the US has retreated to behind its protectionist walls.


----------------------
> The US has suffered negative balance of
> payments for generations, In the 1960s, 70s, and
> 80s, it was US "petrodollars" siphoned off to the
> Middle East (or other oil sources).

Balance of payments surpluses are as problematic as deficits. The accumulated imbalances are problematic for the US but equally so for the creditors. Moreover the US debts are denominated in dollars and the US government controls the value of those dollars.


----------------
> Now it's the Far East, first Japan and the Pacific
> rim, then China which ramped up industry based
> upon cheap labor. The negative balance of payments
> is now tilted to Asia and, especially, China. An
> economics maxim is, "Something which can't go on
> forever, won't," and that applies to the depletion
> of US capital.

Yes. And rectifying the imbalances would be highly traumatic if not done naturally, as savings rates react to changing demographics. Want to know what happens when you eliminate the US deficit sharply? Take a look at the trade numbers from 2007 to 2009: the US CA deficit shrank by roughly half, and that devastated not only world but also the US.


------------------
> Overlooked in this is that,
> contrary to the Kissinger-Nixon hypothesis, China
> remained a top-down (party/oligarchic) economy and
> hostile state, and did not "evolve" into a liberal
> democracy.

Can you point me to a single statement by Nixon or Kissinger that says that? Because neither of them did. Others have, but Nixon or Kissinger did not.


--------------------------
> This, I believe, is the Trump agenda. Trump calls
> himself anti-tariff (long-term), but the US has
> been shut out of the Chinese market by THEIR
> protective tariffs.

China doesn't have huge tariffs. The primary market distortion is through the exchange rate. The trade war with the US has changed that a little--China has raised some tariffs against the US--but the currency is where the action is.


---------------------
> Trump is conducting economic
> warfare, which will have casualties, and GM just
> got bloodied ("friendly fire?"). But investing in
> Chinese production put GM "in harm's way."

Except that the effect of Trump's warfare is to increase GM's investment in China. GM and others were penalized not for having factories in China but for having them in the US.


-------------------
> Certain industries, companies, and sectors will
> have painful adjustments to make, but Trump's goal
> is protecting US production while it ramps up.
> Tariffs are the (short term) means to that end.

Except that the effect of hiking tariffs is to shift production abroad--witness GM, Carrier, GE, IBM, AT&T, Harley Davidson, etc. What tariffs do is make it more attractive for domestic firms to move abroad, and the above and many others are doing precisely that.


--------------------
> Last: I think a lot of Trump's baffoonery is
> conscious distraction, like the cat chasing the
> laser dot. From the non-political oilprice.com, we
> see what an economics-based (as opposed to
> political or military) approach has quietly done
> to a nefarious Iranian/Russian/Syrian oil cabal
> which supplies Assad with oil and cash for
> Hezbollah and Hamas. An interesting read:

There is nothing in that article that is new. The US is forcing its enemies and rivals--including Russia, Iran and Syria--into closer cooperation. You see the same thing in Northeast Asia. American policy used to be divide and conquer: it is now unite and be isolated.

"Except that the effect of hiking tariffs is to shift production abroad--witness GM, Carrier, GE, IBM, AT&T, Harley Davidson, etc. What tariffs do is make it more attractive for domestic firms to move abroad, and the above and many others are doing precisely that."

Plus the tax bill reduced the corporate tax rate on income made by American companies’ overseas subsidiaries, 10.5 percent compared with the new top corporate rate of 21 percent.

Yes, motives aside, the administration has raised the cost of manufacturing things in the United States while making it cheaper to produce things abroad. It should be clear what that portends for jobs and wages.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2018 05:26PM by Lot's Wife.

That’s my experience too. I’m being pushed even harder toward Asian manufacturing. It’s a ridiculous situation. The manufacturing infrastructure in the U.S. should have been protected rather than gutted. It takes a rich ecosystem to make manufacturing economical. All of that trickles up to engineering. Outsourcing the easy stuff leads to outsourcing everything else.

What are the U.S. manufacturers going to do, raise prices? They’re competing against Chinese finished goods to which the new tariffs don’t apply! It’s crazy. Trump is a victim of his own magical thinking. Unless he’s trying to further reduce the middle class, but I’d rather believe he’s a cowboy cocksure of his own BS. He does seem disappointed that playing Bruce Almighty hasn’t worked as well as expected.

To bring this back to Mormonism, this is the cost of culty thinking. Universities are supposed to be a bulwark against bad thinking but were modified to produce obedient cogs for a machine. There’s nothing to combat groupthink. Mormonism provides a window into the mentality of high status insular worlds. They just can’t think outside of their boxes. The GAs have it especially bad because nobody calls them on their shit. They feel good about implementing policies that are dumb on their face and dumber in practice. Because they actually believe the mantle fantasy. Nelson does. Systems that are never challenged are by nature susceptible to creeping corruption.

It does seem rather bleak, but time marches on. Maybe faith has nothing to do with God. Maybe it’s about believing that good will win in the end. Whatever good is.

I'd describe this (in relation to your final paragraph) as a rebellion against standard economic and financial education. The imposition of tariffs and the tearing up of trade treaties is a form of national masochism. Peter Navarro is generally regarded as an idiot, so too Michael Pillsbury.

What we are witnessing is also a rebellion against arithmetic, the simplest form of mathematics, since it is easy to trace the effects of tariffs through to diminished exports and the expatriation of jobs.

It's tragic because these changes take decades to reverse. TPP will not come back. The US was leading the charge towards a trade agreement that would have increased jobs and also bound most of East Asia into a non-sinocentric community. The US has withdrawn from that and China is now organizing East Asian trade. Similarly, once GM and Carrier and Harley Davidson have invested in overseas facilities it becomes very expensive to close those down and relocated back to the US.

One can be faithful (in the sense you use the term) or optimistic, but we must now do that from a lower base of expectations. A lot has been lost.

FWIW, I don't think a company-wide strike will help in the long run because managers are now more responsive to shareholders than employees.

Foreign car sales have undermined unions on the factory floor just like Walmart is in retail.


The retail unions should go after Walmart employees.

IIRC, the only Walmart store where union organizers managed to overcome management's tactics and get to the point of having a vote on unionizing, which they won, was promptly shut down by Walmart. I think it was in Canada, maybe Quebec, where labor hasn't been as totally defeated by capital as it has been in this country since 1980.

Interesting info when you start talking about trade wars.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080615/china-owns-us-debt-how-much.asp

The nest thing that could happen to the American economy would be large scale unionization.

If one Walmart became union, it would be a national game changer f9r the middle class, who is the tax base of our nation.

I am old enough to remember when Butte, MT (at the time, arguably the most union town in the United States) had a unionized McDonalds-after McDonalds fought tooth and nail to avoid it and had their first Butte business burned to the ground.

It's a good idea, Gheco, but it won't work.

Unions only operate successfully in tight industries where companies can't afford to lose workers. If there are tons of workers desperate for jobs, anything that raises the cost of a certain group of workers results in their being fired and replaced.

Applying that logic to particular industries, agricultural laborers can't effectively unionize because farm workers are replaceable. In technology industries, by contrast, workers are not readily replaceable and either get what they want directly or in cooperation with their peers--the equivalent of unionization.

The problem is that the parts of the economy in which the balance of supply and demand favors workers, and hence labor unions, have shrunk relative to sectors in which workers are still in high demand. One factor here was the internationalization of the economy, which enables companies to move production overseas quite easily. Alternatively many industries can leave their operations in the US and still avail themselves of cheaper labor by using, for instance, telephone banks or processors in India or elsewhere. Still another factor is technology, which disintermediates labor--witness the much lower number of workers in previously labor-intensive industries like steel and autos.

You indicate a very real danger that the middle- and lower-class workers who do most of the spending in rich countries are not going to have the income necessary to keep economic growth strong--to buy, for example, the next generation of cell phones. But labor unions aren't the answer; they can't be the answer because demand isn't strong enough to give workers leverage.

A lot hinges on whether the rich countries can find another solution to the problem you correctly identify.

Widespread unionization works well in many other first world nations.

The problems you describe are very real, but could also be handled with more labor friendly legislation.

American business is brutal, based on raw political and financial power. Labor has taken a back seat over the last several decades, to the point the political party claiming to be labor friendly outright and blatantly lies to their constituents while being funded by big businesses and quietly being their henchmen.

The current wealth inequality is unsustainable. The downfall of the American middle class (which funds our nation) is the downfall of our society. Without massive changes to our current system of late or end stage capitalism, we will see blood in the streets.

I suggest this as an accredited investor since 2014.

Gheco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Widespread unionization works well in many other
> first world nations.

If you look at any OECD country, you'll find that their unions were much stronger in the 1960s and 1970s--even the 1980s--than they are today. That general trend is due to global factors.


--------------------
> The problems you describe are very real, but could
> also be handled with more labor friendly
> legislation.

True, on the margin.


---------------------
> Labor has taken a
> back seat over the last several decades, to the
> point the political party claiming to be labor
> friendly outright and blatantly lies to their
> constituents while being funded by big businesses
> and quietly being their henchmen.

Yes. The biggest change in the orientation of the Democratic Party came after Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to unregulated contributions. Since then the Dems have gravitated towards Wall Street and away from labor. The fact that neither party pays much attention to workers is one reason why rage has become such a prominent element in US politics.


-------------------------
> The current wealth inequality is unsustainable.
> The downfall of the American middle class (which
> funds our nation) is the downfall of our society.
> Without massive changes to our current system of
> late or end stage capitalism, we will see blood in
> the streets.

You are right about the inequality and its political implications. I would suggest, however, that we already see blood in the streets.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2018 04:55PM by Lot's Wife.

“When the rich are too rich there are ways, and when the poor are too poor there are ways. Last winter we sold two girls and endured, and this winter, if this one my woman bears is a girl, we will sell again. One slave I have kept—the first. The others it is better to sell than to kill, although there are those who prefer to kill them before they draw breath. This is one of the ways when the poor are too poor. When the rich are too rich there is a way, and if I am not mistaken, that way will come soon.”

Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth

One of my favorite literary quotes of all time.

I also compare this to the abortion question.
People have always killed their children, more often girls if the sex is identified. Abortion is going to happen but as a nation we need to admit what we have become to make it such a prevalent option.

"You are right about the inequality and its political implications. I would suggest, however, that we already see blood in the streets."

IMO...it's not capitalism doing this, but govt-funded/backed/back-dealed politicized capitalism doing this. Get the politicians out of the deal-making. That's not their job.

Is the problem the government interfering in commerce or moneyed interests interfering in the government?

You want to shut down GM for laying people off? You want to shut down:
Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, when they inevitably lay off when they chose to downsize??

I do agree w/the president (can't say his name..) that since WE bailed out GM back in 2009, they should do either of these 2 things:
Move all their operations into the US.
or
Payback the govt, the bailout money they took.

Uh, GM did pay back the bailout money. It did so ahead of schedule.

Hey, no fair using actual facts. :P

(Why) Haven't you read the history of [the actual troubles, fights, & struggles involved]
Work/ Workers/ WORKING, especially in America, or the IWW [International Workers of the World], and the like?

People can do what they want but they don't always want the same thing, or have the same abilities, wisdom, interest, needs, time, or interest.

Working for 'pay' has been diving people every since I can remember... but I can't.

A lot of people don't even like the work they are doing, or who they are working for, or DON"T HAVE ANY CHOICE.

There are a lot of reasons. I'll only mention the big two: (1) working individuals; (2) bosses.

Hope this helps.
It can't hurt.

M@t