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I'm someone who will most likely lose their job if GM or Chrysler go under, so anyone against the bridge loan "FUCK YOU!"

The Japaneses car's built in the south are just as big hunks of shit as the American ones built in the Rust Belt, its just that the Japs don't have to deal with retiree health care(for both union and non-union retirees) and they fire anyone suspected of bringing up union talk.


It's hard to believe a Toyota built in the south is as big a hunk of shit as a Buick built in Detroit, but granted that may be an issue of perception if quality has really improved with American cars like some reports claim. Unfortunately, perception still weighs heavy into buying decisions for most people, and it takes a long time to turn it around. This latest bailout begging of the big 3 are only validating existing poor public perception.

The problems have been lurking in the lake a long time before economic downturn drained the lake to expose it: take the union auto worker making $50 per hour to fasten bolts on a line, when there's not much demand for the car. The economics are upside down here for an employer trying to compete in a "free market" when they've also got a gun to their head to use union workers a/k/a "socialized labor". Something's got to give, no?

The whole country is having to compromise right now whether they like it or not, yet unions are showing up with the old "all or nothing" playbook to a game of "bend or break". The vote down of the bailout last week is due to unions not wanting to make any concessions as usual, and the deal broke.

Hearing individual accounts of the "every man" autoworker and his family at risk of losing their livelihood are no doubt sad, but as a group they're having trouble finding the sympathy they feel they deserve because everyone else is hurting too, and in many cases even more so.