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Decius Has Responded
Decius Responds to Critiques of Flight 93
Published in GeneralWell that was unexpected.
Everything I said in “The Flight 93 Election” was derivative of things I had already said, with (I thought) more vim and vigor, in a now-defunct blog. I assumed the new piece would interest a handful of that blog’s remaining fans and no one else. My predictive powers proved imperfect.
Which should cheer everyone who hated what I said: if I was wrong about the one thing, maybe I’m wrong about the others. But let me take the various objections in ascending order of importance.
Do you buy Canards by the case?
I love free trade when it is unhampered in both directions. Unilateral free trade is not free trade at all , but regulated trade by government agreement.
Please cite the use of Patriot where I apply it to myself in any argument.
I expect that the problem is that those autoworkers have come to the conclusion that their job and livelihoods are an entitlement owed them by that massive corporation, which, at the end of the day still has to recover all of its costs.
Nobody owes them a job. Where does this entitlement mentality come from, TK?
Jamie, I don’t know if you’ve ever worked for a large corporation after a merger but I have and there’s frequently repeated assurances that there are no plans to let anyone go and they’re go to utilize existing infrastructure and personnel.
A couple of years later – at the most – and the newly acquired site is shut down and people are laid off.
Ford may in fact keep people employed in those plants after retooling but anyone who trusts a “no one is getting laid off” statement during an organizational shift like that is kidding themselves.
I suspect that part of it comes from how their employers are so well-connected with government elites that they suffer no consequences from their dumb decisions. They’re entitled based on who their friends are, why can’t we be.
Cronyism is a winning issue, but we refuse to go near it, probably because so many political paychecks depend on it.
I’ve no problem with people making infinite amounts of money, but when you make it by manipulating Washington instead of winning in the market, I’ve issues with it.
Presently, business and Washington elites are virtually indistinguishable. That’s what we need to change.
Meh. They are unionized auto workers. If they get laid off, they just get paid for not working.
So, Ford will find a way to use them.
I suggest you ask them yourself. First of all, you are making an assumption not based on anything but your own biases. Second of all, why are you asking me? If you want to know, go find out.
I suggest a good ice breaking opening like “Hey knuckle dragging moron, why do you feel the company who gave you everything to which you gave nothing owes you a job?”
Let me know how that works.
Ford didn’t take any government bailout money. There was a competitive consequence to this. GM foisted a bunch of defective Chevy Volts on the market and wasn’t sanctioned by the government. After all, the government, at the time, was a major shareholder. Meanwhile, Ford was recalling everything when there was a single defective report just to stay clear of the consumer agencies. They’ve been playing it the right way.
That’s not how it works. They get paid if they strike by the union (and only for a short amount of time). Layoffs are layoffs.
For at least two decades no Detroit-based auto manufacturer has made a significant profit on small cars manufactured domestically. SUV’s and Trucks have a higher profit margin, hence the retooling and being able to keep production here.
Are you capable of having a civil conversation?
What on earth was uncivil? I did not call anyone a progressive, like you do, I did not tell anyone they have no understanding of the Constitution , like you do, and so forth and so on. Calm down and go with the flow, Mr Lockett.
I don’t know what Ford’s current labor contract is, but for most of the last several decades, the big 3 OEM contracts had a clause where when a company “laid-off” workers, the company would continue to pay the workers 80% of their salary.
Labor is effectively a fixed cost for the big 3.
I do know in the financial crisis, they negotiated a two-tier wage structure that allowed a lower wage for new workers and they may have more ability to lay off those newer workers, but I know they gave some of the wage gap back in the last round.
Dude. Seriously.
Jobs are at the end of the day an arm’s length economic transaction. I’ve been working at my current place of employment for 10 years. What do they owe me? Other than salary held in arrears by payroll, nothing, really. I work there because I like the people with whom I work and because I get paid – not because I’ve sacrificed a goat on their altar or because I have skills that are so specific that I can only work for them.
I work. They pay. It’s a more than satisfactory arrangement. They aren’t my daddy or my family. We’re each grownups with expectations of the other that are within reason. If they decided tomorrow that I was too expensive or ineffective and that I needed to find someplace else to work I would accept that and have to move on. I haven’t arranged my life in such a fashion that I’m married to my job and will be left in a state of privation if I happen to not have my job in the morning. My career is separate from my job.
Now, I have to confess: I’m considered a professional and my attitude towards my career is that of a professional. This is not the attitude that I have seen from the sort of UAW shift workers you’re talking about. It seems as if they expect to earn obscene wages and benefits for what amounts to unskilled labor and treat their employer as a whale.
Then there’s this:
Here’s a fine example of that and why automakers want to move jobs elsewhere: Here you have workers getting drunk and high on the job who were terminated. Chrysler was forced into rehiring these slobs by an arbitrator. Seriously. I can’t even begin to describe the depths of the contempt in which I hold unions and the people who use them to do this kind of stuff. So, my capacity for sympathy is limited.
These people have jobs. Not “lifestyles guaranteed at the expense of uncle sugar.”
Progressive isn’t an insult it’s a descriptor. I have lots of progressive friends they are lovely people, just wrong.
Tom Meyer, Ed.
I’m just catching up with this thread and saw your list. “At least” is a pretty appropriate modifier.
I did say most discussions on immigration don’t mention it, so these few – except for Oblomov’s and the Hanson podcast – do utter the word; but that’s about it.
(Even @dadoffour who reviews Trump’s speech barely does more than touches on the subject.)
It’s good to know you’re familiar with the Control-F function. Too bad for me there’s not a way – or the free time – to search every Ricochet discussion and comment thread about immigration, multiculturalism and the Balkanization of America and never utters the word assimilation.
But I’ll be watching.
So make the deal- locate the plant in an ‘economic rebuild zone’ and there will be no union or a union contract the equivalent to the one in Mexico,. There is no reason on earth we cannot compete with Mexico if we want to. The UAW is a subsidiary of the DNC and the GOP should owe them nothing. Do you think a depressed inner city needing jobs cares about the UAW?
If the Government will not give as well as get , the companies should move. Paint the UAW as standing in the way of jobs. The UAW kissed the jobs goodbye anyway, why should they care where they go?
I am sure a lot of US cities would love the Mexican auto plant.
And BTW, stop the idiot café standards and suspend any and all regulation mandated car features in the pipeline.
I expect we could rekindle a lot of patriotism in boardrooms with that approach.