Labor

Watched the Detroit CEO's testify to the Senate today. Interesting factoid; the cost of labor (or labour, for my Aussie friends) for building a car in the US is about 10%. That includes salaries, benefits, pensions, etc.

The UAW has made a series of concessions over the last 8 years to bring them more in-line with the US workers of foreign companies (i.e. Toyota, etc.). They are not the same but similar.

The canard that somehow US automakers can't be competitive with the foreign manufacturers due to labor is completely wrong.

Ron Christie (GOP hack) is on my teevee telling us that the auto companies should go into chapter 11, comparing GM to Circuit City.. Nobody will buy a car from a company in bankruptcy.

He's an idiot.

...

Adding..

One of the benefits foriegn companies enjoy.. is that they don't have to pay the health care costs of their employees.

How about something different. How about, as part of the bail-out plan, every member of the UAW is put on a Medi-Care administered HMO? That's a start..

By the way.. the cost of the bullshit war in Iraq would have paid for all of this.. plus put everyone on a single-payer health care system.

The financial cost of the war has been more than £4.5 billion ($9 billion) to the UK,[286] and over $845 billion to the U.S., with the total cost to the U.S. economy estimated at $3 trillion.[

Instead of pointing fingers at the UAW, how about we ship that fucking monkey off to The Hague to face war crimes charges? How about that? Huh?

"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem." — George W. Bush, Jan. 2001.

Fucking jackass.

/updated

Nobel Prize winning Shrillness;

I’ve been ruminating over economic prospects for next year, and I’m getting scared.

Two points:

1. The economy is falling fast. We’ll see what tomorrow’s employment report says, but we could well be losing jobs at a rate of 450,000 or 500,000 a month.

2. Infrastructure spending will take time to get going — a new Goldman Sachs report suggests that projects that are “shovel-ready” are probably only a few tens of billions worth, and that a larger effort would take much of a year to get going. Meanwhile, it’s very questionable how much effect tax rebates will have on consumer demand. So it may be hard for stimulus to get much traction until late 2009 — and that’s even if Congress goes along, which may be a problem given all the bad analysis and disinformation out there.

So here’s what I’m wondering: will it, in fact, even be possible to pull the economy out of its nosedive before unemployment goes into double digits? I’m starting to wonder.

John's business does better when the economy sucks worse. He's been a bit worried about the government attempting to save everyone from getting foreclosed on. I know.. it's somewhat ghoulish, but it's like blaming the undertaker for the patient dying. He's just doing a job.

I don't think that's going to be a problem.

My brother-in-law is a muckity muck in the infrastructure business. I expect he'll cash in.

Good times...

/update 2

Andrew Sullivan

I'm beginning to hope that the Big 3 go under. Any sign that the tax payer is prepared to rescue these losers means we have all but given up on the market economy in favor of government command and control. Whatever the way out of this crisis, returning to the 1970s is not part of it.

Christ, he's such a fucking wanker.

He's not going to be one of the 3 million people who will lose a job.. a job they need in order to.. you know.. have a roof over their head and something to eat.

Economy be damned.. jobs be damned.. we need to punish those "losers".. which is something I'm hearing from a lot of similar assholes.