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Original Article
by PatriotsFightTheIronHeel Mon Dec 22, 2008
After the Big 3 finally got their bailout you would think on the face of it that the problem is solved. Judging by the newspapers we can now move on the next topic. Compromise has been reached and the best possible solution has been found.
The meme that everybody in the industry has to chip in and sacrifice in order to keep it alive has been tried over and over. A company would for some reason be near destruction and the line is 'labor has to give something(wages,benefits) just like everyone else or risk losing everything'. We are seeing the first battles now in the fight for the life of the UAW, which is arguably the cornerstone of the American labor movement. If they die, you can kiss the American middle class goodbye.
Of course, the death of the Big 3 would be the death of The American Auto industry. This cannot be allowed. America must bailout Detroit, we are told, and even Bush Jr knows it, which means it must be as obvious as remembering to breathe. So the question I have to ask is simple enough. If American taxpayers and American laborers have to sacrifice in order to save the American Auto industry ?
Free market pure capitalism economics as a system teaches that unions, government interference and tariffs all act to distort the true sense of the marketplace. The less the marketplace is polluted with the obstruction of regulation the more balanced the system will become, we are told, and with more competition consumers will have better options among both price and quality of products. Free market capitalists will tell you this and more, their cheerleaders such as the late Milton Friedman, or living dinosaurs Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, and since their advice worked so well all over the world in the past leading up to this point, we should take their advice a little longer.
The fact of the matter is that the American Auto industry IS vital to the American Economy.
But according to the actions of a powerful few, the American middle class is not.
Case in point.
Foreign owned auto manufacturers such as Toyota and Saab can afford to pay non-union American laborers to build their cars here in America. They receive tax breaks in many states where labor laws are enacted to handicap unions. They are given resources that are not available to the American owned companies. This hurts American business. These American business used to send their factories overseas because they could not afford to pay for American labor, something they never actually claimed except for in their actions. How ironic is it that we used to open GM factories in Asia to pay Asian laborers to build cars for Americans, and now Asian companies open Asian factories in America and pay American laborers who work for slightly less to build our own cars for us.
Where is the protectionism there? Where is the necessary sacrifice we all have to make together? My money went for bailouts. Where is your commitment? By the way, southern and western right to work states, I'm looking in your direction.
I thought this was the entire reason we have tariffs. If a foreign company has an unfair advantage over an American one we used to be allowed to place a tax on their goods as they entered the country. I guess that doesn't apply if that company tricks our citizens into building their productys here for them. Want to protect the AMerican Auto industry without cutting our own fiscal throats to do it? Tariff the hell out of foreign auto companies. This is how we kept Britian and France from dominating us financially during our nations first years, we had just won independence militarily, we could not afford to lose our independence finacially, then or now.
But multinational corporations have no fear of losing their independence, do they? If anything, they are entirely independant of everyone. The pay little or no taxes. If one country goes to the wolves economically they can pick up and set up shop somewhere else. The American middle class, on the other hand, has everything to lose, and the UAW is where it will start. If the middle class is personified by skilled labor, professional and educated labor, and they have no voice to negotiate with the management of these multinational corporations, well, isn't that the end of the middle class and the three clas Upper-middle-poor construct? Better yet, at that point, are we not the have's and the have nots, or is it time to call ourselves indentured servants yet? How about wage slaves?
A moderated capitalism can be moral and provide for all. I'm not making this up. Neither did Karl Marx. It was Adam Smith's idea, or the gist of it. The Friedman free market baloney is economic rape, taking by force through theory and lies, and right now the middle class is facing the battlefront on all sides, but most notably, unions are at risk. The UAW, the UFT and other intergral unions are all that stand in the way of us and the CEO's who would take from the poor and give to the rich, modern day Sherrifs of Nottingham all of them.
So where does Mazdanomics come in. It is the title of the latest series of commercials running on several channels, including FOX, where the ad states something along the lines that for 0% APR and no payments until March 2009 you can walk away with any one of five new Mazda's, and in this uncertain economy, who could turn their back on a deal like that!
As of now it should be the duty of the American middle and working class to buy American made products, and now more than ever from Detroit. We should be able to claim a tax credit if we do so, or something. The only reason auto employees in non union shops get paid as much as they do is because unions like the UAW exist. If the UAW disappeared tomorrow those Toyota jobs in Kentucky would be paying $7.50 p/hr with no benefits before lunch break.
But, striking deeper to the root of the problem, how the hell can Mazda give out 0% APR and no payments till after Obama is in charge? Don't you get the feeling that they know you can't afford it now, and you definitely won't be able to afford it three monts from now. It is just like the housing industry, or Wall St., or every other piece of shit that will blow up in our face (Surprise!) in the next few months. Are the foreign auto companies waiting to get more sales on the books now, just to see the financing fall apart months from now when they can step right back on the never ending corporate bread line again. You know, the one that isn't available to anyone else. Isn't this the same problem with housing, you know, people couldn't afford it anyway they shouldn't have been buying that house in the first place and all that line of bull. Are we not being set up again. And again.
So call the foreign auto makers bluff. They know they can offer you free cars till March because Detroit has a bad reputation right now and Obama is gonna have to fix EVERYTHING BUSH FUCKED UP, except Bush didn't fuck this one up, it started years ago with free market pure capitalism economics, and from Reagan to Bush Jr it has turned into this.
Hold them accountable. Do not buy foreign cars. It isn't the end-all-be-all answer, but until we get green energy efficient vehicles coming out of Detroit, the least we can do is keep gas guzzling foreign crap from ruining our middle class jobs, our national budgets with bailouts and getting Republicans re-elected with their lobbying money. Or, better yet, if you can, take mass transit, or even more, ride a bike. I would rather walk to work for the rest of my life than think I bought a foreign car made in a non union factory in a Republican Senators state. Ouch!
