Detroit's decline is a distinctively capitalist failure

Detroit auto makers had little choice. The union would pick one auto company to strike and stay out till they gave in, forcing the other two to give the same. All three would help the striking employees with money if union strike funds ran out.

 

I will reiterate my opinion that both the left and right, black and non-black let Detroit down. It was a collective failure and that failure is all the sadder for that shared responsibility.

 

Yes, absolutely, Detroit was destroyed by leftism. I disagree with the "heart of capitalism" comment. It's always funny how when Detroit was successful I heard people just like you, saying that Detroit was a perfect example of workers unions and socialism succeeds. Then the moment Detroit turns to ruins, you start screaming that it's "the heart of capitalism".

You people are full of crap. Clear? Just crap.

Second, a Pension is not something they pay into. And no one is saying they were not entitled to them.

Pension are not like 401Ks, where you the employee pay into it, from your wages, and then you only get out of it, what you paid into it. Pensions are paid for by the company, and employees are paid out what the contract requires.

Yes, the employees were entitled to it, based on the contract. We are not debating that. We are merely making the observation that it was in fact Pensions, that brought down GM and Chrysler.

Pension systems should be eliminated. They are not good. They destroy companies, and ruin the economy. 401Ks should be used instead.

No one is ignoring Hybrids. Hybrids are just crappy cars. You can do the math until the end of your life, they never come out ahead.

Competition is good. Without competition there would be no hybrids, or any good cars. Look at the auto market in India prior to '91, and look what zero competition results in.

 

But it *DOES* fall short of quota. Saying "unionists" is too broad a brush. There are Union employees that do work hard. The problem, there are many who don't. And you can't get rid of them.

Unions drive up the cost of doing business. Some of that is in lazy Union employees. But most of what the Union does is force up costs through other measures.

Take Hostess. 10 years ago, Hostess was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Unions got together with an investor (who was a democrat FYI), and made an agreement to keep the company open. One of the demands the Unions kept, was that Hostess products had to be delivered in different trucks. Now get this....

The HoHos, Twinkies, and SnoBalls had to be delivered with three different trucks. Instead of one truck delivering all the stuff, they had three. Why? Because it protected Union Jobs. They have to hire three truck drivers, to do the work on ONE.

Of course that's a huge cost to the company. Which is why they ended up bankrupt anyway, and now Hostess is a Non-Union company. And the new company has BANNED former Union employees from working there.

Unions harm the Union members.

They are in government. Government bankrupted Lehman Brothers. You don't know this? Lehman was the original company the Federal Government signed a contract with to make Sub-prime loans back in 1997.

The reason Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, is because they did what the Government told them to do, and bought bad loans. The people bankrupted Lehman, were socialists in government, and they are still there, and still pushing bad loans.

 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

Mutmekep.... I have a message for you. You need to post this on your bathroom mirror and read it every morning.

 

First off, McCarthy was right. There were spies in the state department. It's a fact. So, yes Heil McCarthy. He was completely right.

As for capitalism stealing.... Capitalism doesn't steal. That's not capitalism is you are stealing.

I'm a capitalist. I own property. I own investments. I have not stolen a penny from anyone.

You people just make up stuff. Just a bunch of liars. You can't come up with a real argument to defend your socialism... .so you just make up crap, and blame everyone else for your failures.

Where is the socialist paradise? Hmm? Cuba? Venezuela? China? North Korea? Why were there "boat people" leaving Vietnam? Huh? Where is this grand workers paradise? You've had 100 years to prove your system is superior. Where is it? Either put up, or shut up. Make your case, or spare us your whiny cries.

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Nah. I don't see that.

 

As you know, there are no socialist countries because you murdered all the working people who tried to set up such democratic states. Pure McCarthy, you peasants, and very sick!

 

Oh yes... of course. That's why people in Russia were starving to death, waiting hours and hours in line to get half a loaf of bread.



Little did those people know, that the reason there are no socialist countries, isn't because people were starving, apparently McCarthy showed up and murdered all of them.

Are you an idiot?

Nothing has changed with you people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23885377
Venezuela country wide food shortages.



I suppose in idiot world, McCarthy is going to come back from the grave, and murder all those people?

And look what they are waiting in line for....



The sign at the top says "Made in Socialism".... above the empty barren shelves.

Notice the boxes and boxes of Coffee Filters..... but no coffee. In Venezuela... they can't get coffee.... think about that. Socialism can't even provide freakin coffee....

What's up with that Lolo? Did McCarthy show up and steal all your coffee?

Idiots... constantly making up absolutely MORONIC excuses for why your dumb system never works. It was McCarthy... he stole the coffee, and murdered all the starving people. Darn ol McCarthy.

Idiots... It's like every other day on this forum, I see a new level Forest Gump thinking.

"Mama always tol me, it was McCarthy that stole all the coffee!"

IDIOTS! gah...

 

Noise machine. That was state capitalism, kid. You'd know if McCarthy hadn't stopped your granddads from thinking. Aren't arse-licking slaves tedious?

 

You have nothing to say. Got it.

 

Heh. Nothing of the sort at all.

How exactly did McCarthy stop people from thinking when the system corrected itself? I guess we can forgive members of Airstrip-One for not knowing about Edward R. Murrow and the See It Now program which mocked McCarthy and helped drive his popularity down quite a bit, especially when Murrow started focusing on the way Annie Lee Moss was being treated. How his defeats in the Matthews Affair and the Army investigation clearly lowered his popularity. Or how the Senate, even members of his own party, stood up against him. How Senator Flanders said "Were the Junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them." Or how the Senate ultimately voted to censure Low-Blow Joe. Or how Eisenhower said "McCarthyism was now "McCarthywasm" after the whole thing was over. As you know, the system dealt with him, a system filled with our grandfathers who clearly were thinking despite the fantasies of people unaware of US political history, and McCarthy is a distant memory with no real bearing on politics today. We've moved on.

Clearly, it looks like others haven't.

 

Detroits decline can be laid squarely at the feet of auto unions and the democrats that have run the city forever.

 

But the problem again is that McCarthy was right.

"The Strange Career of Annie Lee Moss: Rethinking Race, Gender, and McCarthyism" 2007 Andrea Friedman Published in the Oxford Journal.

Moss, was confirmed to be a recruit of the Communist Part. Mary Stalcup Markward testified, and documents later found, had Moss's name, address, age, gender, and her employment, on Communist Party rolls.

The entire thing was an act. She lied. The Democrat's who cross examined her lied. They played dumb, pretending not to know what was going on, and she had no idea what the Communist Party was.

It was all lies, all an act. Further, FBI records released under the freedom of information act, also had more concrete evidence.

This is the problem I have with people who complain about McCarthy. He was right! The entire time he was right.

I don't care about his popularity. So what if the public was against him? McCarthy was dead on right. The historical facts prove it.

 

Given McCarthy made his name, for a while at least, with his Un-American Activities gig, was there ever an attempt by any US government - federal or state - to actually ban the Communist Party?

 

I wasn't arguing about whether he was right or not though. He was right, but he went about it in such a way that he did massive harm to the very viewpoint he supported. It's possible to do the right thing but in a completely wrong way. That was McCarthy.

And look at the damage he created. You now have pseudo-socialists using McCarthy as their own personal boogeyman in order to score cheap points against the US even though they are completely unaware of the context in which he lived or the forces working against him - much less the fact that other countries such as their own have and are doing the same thing as Joe, if not worse.

 

Lol... What type of socialism do you want? Did Chavez not nationalize enough companies for you? What other things should the Venezuelans go without?

 

Could you please explain ,how the $85bn a month of transferring from the US Treasury isn't Stealing ,every month ,now QE ,is promised another 6 months from Obama to Wall Street traders the same maggots that caused GFC 1 !

$85bn a month of Stealing from the US Treasury WHAT CAN'T YOU SEE ,join the dots !

 

How is a text book example of crony socialism and unionism in a sky blue city in any way a failure of capitalism...

 

Socialism is impossible to establish in a single country , Nationalisation of Industry and resources ,is a means not the Goal of Socialism .

Globalisation of trans-National Corporations is!

In these days of global everything , without an International Perspective Any talk of socialism ,is Bluster and utopian twaddle. Chavez ,Castro ect are Bourgeois Nationalists not Socialist Working Class Internationalist.

 

That's actually another false claim. McCarthy never had anything at all to do with the "un-american activities" gig. The full name....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee

Was the "House Un-American Activities Committee".... notice "House". That committee was run by the House of Representatives. McCarthy was a Senator. He was in the Senate. He was never once ever part of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He never black balled an actor in Hollywood. He never attacked a writer, or song writer.

McCarthy was only ever interested in getting rid of Soviet Communist Spies in our government. The Communist Party in America, was funneling information back to the Soviets.

McCarthy never wanted to ban the communist party. He didn't want to "ruin careers" of anyone. He only wanted to get the spies out of our government.

That's all he ever pushed for, and that's all he ever wanted.

And again... HE WAS RIGHT. Period. We have the soviet cables today, released under the freedom of information act, that prove everything McCarthy said. It is established fact.

 

I guess they could follow the UK socialist model and go without teeth

 

So........ if I agree to give you my car.... I can then accuse you of stealing?

The US government agreed to this. No one stole anything. My grand mother purchased US savings bonds, for me a child, for my college education.

Are you saying my then 60 year old grandmother, retired school teacher, who purchased those bonds, was actually a supervillainess, capable of stealing money from the US Government?

Like half the old grand mothers and grand fathers in the country, are all the evil supervillains stealing from the US government.....

 

Yes the US government of for and by the capitalist trash of Wall Street is robbing the American people blind ,and you agree with it ,OK hand in your citizenship !

The Capitalist Welfare Government of Obama!

 

Socialism isn't socialism because if it was, then that would prove it doesn't work, so we have to make up excuses for why our consistent 100 year history of failure, is actually the result of other countries we have no control over, using a different model that works better................

Or the simpler translation...... "It's all Bush's fault... or anyone's fault but our own"

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They just need to nationalize cavities.....

 

Who is this "We" , only one Socialist Political tendency exists www.wsws.org