03-05-2011, 10:31 PM
Rick-o wrote:
[quote=deckeda]
Your Sienna---what did those non-union workers do with the cash they earned? "Waste it" on their mortgages, or food? (No offense Rick, really.)
No offense taken, I'm well beyond that when discussing crap like this in online forums.
All I have to say is that those non-union workers had better wake up and organize. War has been declared on the working class and if we don't watch out, there will only be two types left in this country. Filthy rich, and dirt poor. Forget about anything in between, it won't exist.
I have a largely liberal with a capital "L" leaning, particularly where it comes to social issues (maybe less so when discussing economic issues, although I think they're both so intertwined that ...) and having two parents who retired with decent pensions from teaching (both of them were part of the NEA; I don't know how much of that factored into the school district having a decent pension plan, but for the sake of argument it's fair to assume it surely did. I KNOW it certainly never got them rich). Maybe because that's a "service" and not manufacturing sector, the NEA isn't a relevant example here.
Despite all that, I've always viewed jobs and careers and individual endeavors. Your job sucks, you leave and find something else. Need to move? Go to school? OK, and so that's a problem how? I get that many decades ago, workers didn't have a voice and needed one, at least as far as Hollywood has shown us, but isn't today different ---at least a little --- insofar as workers have more opportunity to ... do something else? Does everyone within a certain cultural or regional area "have to" work at a factory, and more to the point, is that sort of career the only---or even main one---that "defines" what we refer to as "the middle class?
The greater issue I have discussing this stuff is that it's hard not to frame it all into absolutist "if-then" scenarios.