gmboy makes a comment about one flipping burgers. its' a good point. in the not too distant future, flipping burgers will be considered a good job. the banking/ financial industry bailout will push $1 trllion. the big 3 LOANS are a pittance, relative to that $ number.the american (and canadian) governments have been subsidizing the farming, airline, steel, & timber/softwood industries, to name a few, for years/decades. yet people don't bitc* , ad nauseam, about that.
we're witnessing the slow erosion of the middle class in north america, while the middle class is rising in china. the lack of action by the governments to level the playing field in trade, about 15 years ago, is the biggest single issue here. the company and union heads of the large manufacturing industries have been on the governments about this since the early-mid nineties. it just doesn't make sense to let major industries slowly slip away. the governments are now forced to "subsidize" industry, BECAUSE of their inaction/incompetence. your new president says that he will address trade imbalances. he cannot go there and try to force the chinese, koreans, and japanese to level the playing field in trade. he has no cards to play, as these nations own more than $2 trillion in american debt, as well as hundreds of billions of u.s. dollars in reserves.
there were comments a few weeks back from people with degrees complaining that the big 3 line workers made more money than they did. that won't be the case in the future, when most manufacturing jobs are overseas. the funny thing is that many of the educated people are too stupid/shortsighted to see that they, too, will be without a job. many/most of the service industry jobs that will be created won't need engineers, designeers, MBA's, on so on. the educated ones that lose their jobs as manufacturing disappears will be competing with the tens of thousands that the colleges pump out every year. and most will be competing for low paying, service industry jobs.
who will pick up the tab for the future loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in lost tax revenue ? in the near future, the person that asks you "would you like fries with that"?, will likely have his/hers framed MBA on the wall in front of the microphone.
it's happening as we speak. we should all think twice before we go on about how much the big 3 workers make, especially the ones that believe that they make $150,000./ year, and the ones that wish for the demise of the auto industry, or any manufacturing industry. the old line -- be careful what you wish for - you just might get it. it's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. when manufacturing disappears, in any industry, we all eventually pay. the one thing that i don't understand -- why does that elude most people ?