Today Harold Meyerson complains about the situation with the Detroit auto makers in an op-ed in the Washington Post:
In a narrow sense, what the Republicans are proposing would gut the benefits of roughly a million retirees. In a broad sense, they want to destroy the institution that did more than any other to raise American living standards, and they want to do it by using the power of government to lower American living standards — in the middle of the most severe recession since the 1930s. The auto workers deserve better, and so does the nation they did so much to build.
He hasn’t come to terms yet with the reality of the situation: the auto makers simply don’t have the revenues to support the level of compensation their union contracts demand. That isn’t political or stubborn or wrongheaded or heartless. It is arithmetic.
If Mr. Meyerson has a plan to save the auto makers that doesn’t involve their hourly workers taking a pay cut or the American people who on average make less than automobile workers subsidizing their wages indefinitely, he should trot it out. I’d welcome it. I don’t think there is one and he doesn’t present one.
You have expressed the situation in remarkably clear language. It is language that will always fail to draw a response from Meyerson and his ilk, simply by virtue of its absolute clarity.
Most American poll takers see the situation as you have posed it, and oppose the auto bailout. But then, most Americans do not have anything to gain and much to lose from misplaced governmental largesse.
Meyerson is mostly right.
He knows full well that the automakers don’t have the dough to fulfill its union contracts. So by default you see no recourse but to sh*t on the very workers who have begun pulling GM and Chrysler out of the tank by making products on par quality-wise with the best Japan and Europe have to offer.
There are no heroes here. GM and Chrysler were standing in the deep end of the pool for so long that they forgot how to swim. Congress, led by the Michigan delegation, has been a willing enabler. The UAW indeed shares some blame.
But do you really suggest that these companies should be left to die, which is what an “orderly” bankruptcy process would result in, only with a few fewer broken bones but the same 3 million-plus jobs down the toilet?
Judging from the interminable posts on your dream palace, you’re feeling no pain. Congratulations for being happily in the minority in these difficult economic times. But a lot of other folks are feeling pain, some of it certainly self inflicted, and your smugness is getting a bit over the top for being an otherwise thoughtful commentator.
shaun, if you have a plan to save GM and Chrysler, please present it. GM and Chrysler haven’t done so. Otherwise, moderate your tone.
I have first-hand daily knowledge of the automobile makers, their managers, and the UAW. Do you?
Most of the three million who’d be hurt by GM’s and Chrysler’s defaults aren’t employees of the auto companies. GM and Chrysler could have a plan to save themselves and all of those other folks tomorrow if they had the inclination to. It is they who are the unsympathetic ones, not me. You should save your anger for them rather than turning them on me.
I further resent your comments because I’ve been systematically defending the UAW and the auto workers. Go back and read my posts again. I’ve been complaining about GM’s and Chrysler’s management not the unions. If you need direction to people who are bashing the unions and the workers, I’ll be happy to point some out to you.
I’m not being smug I’m simply stating the arithmetic: the auto makers don’t have the jack to pay their employees and won’t for the foreseeable future.
Your resentment is duly noted, as well as your imperiousness. And your house is lovely.
And so I await your know-it-all-ness reaction to the plan announced this morning by the White House that smells awfully like the Corker proposal.
It’s to bad that a serious comment had to resort to ad hom for point-scoring. As if only a hermit living in a cave on the mountain top has the moral authority to voice an opinion.