The racism there is astounding. It made me think I was seeing something from Stormfront.

From one of the comments:
"What's bizarre is if you go out of the city a few miles, you're in nice suburbs."

That's not bizarre. It's planned that way. The suburbs aren't Detroit proper and aren't part of the same tax base. If they made the surrounding area part of the actual City of Detroit and were able to incorporate the residents (and their taxes), the wails of the insulated classes would be heard all the way to Oregon.

"What's bizarre is if you go out of the city a few miles, you're in nice suburbs."

Every slum I've ever been to is exactly like this.

My theory is that it's partially to do with having a pool of cheap and desperate labor handy along with that warm feeling some people get when their need to look down on someone else is fulfilled.

Your safe return to us with many stories of a warm welcoming family reunion, hopefully putting behind you the isolation of Thanksgiving. If you happen to see any cats, please video record them for us.

No, but I've been having weird recurring dreams where I go there and it's all eerie and empty. I have a fascination with abandoned places.

Maybe not the good paying jobs, but the crap paying jobs certainly would have.

Sadly, those auto worker's aspirations for their children to work as cashiers at Walmart will go unfulfilled.

But look at it on the bright side. Now maybe their crack-addicted-hobo kids can unionize panhandling. Can't out-source that one.

It's good to have aspirations!

All kidding aside, Mr Wildcat, do you really not agree with the statement that unions contributed to the outsourcing of the auto industry? And could you propose a realistic way in which the situation might have been handled differently?

Oh bosh. There are plenty of crap paying jobs; there were before the unions and there are today.

But all kidding aside? That would be unconstitutional! We'd have to fuck a bald eagle or something to redeem ourselves in the eyes of the Founders. OK, here goes...

Failure of the unions was twofold. Firstly, they believed that they were negotiating with the owners of the company. They were not, they were negotiating with the corporate executives.

Secondly, they readily conceded real wage increases in exchange for future promises. Promises neither the owners nor the executives could possibly keep.

In fact, the "good paying" jobs you speak of were by and large the result of a lot of striking and negotiating on the part of these workers.

So can unions work? Absolutely, look at Germany. You like their products, no? They're the industrial powerhouse of the EU, and the creditor to most of the rest of the region. They have strong unions, and the law requires union reps to be on the boards of large companies. You'd be surprised at how much wiser the decisionmaking is when your CEO is forced to take into account all the lower level people in your company, rather than just maximizing his own salary and bonus as is the custom here in the US.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled cartoon horse vaginas. I think Gmorks horse ass trampstamp should be three bullets.

Clearly, there aren't *enough* crap paying jobs in Detroit, else there wouldn't be so many people broke and unemployed. Unless you're trying to imply that the real problem here is that poor people refuse to work...?

It's certainly true that unions can, in some instances, lead to higher paying jobs. They fought hard for (loyal dues-paying union) wage increases... with the rather unfortunate side-effect that it is no longer in the industry's best interest to keep their factories stateside. That's the nature of the global economy. Work goes where it can be done cheaply.

Now, I suppose forcing unions and the corporate power structure into bed with each is one way to at least slow down the process by which workers get screwed over by the hierarchies that claim authority over them! See, it makes sense, because we know that placing a person in a corporate boardroom instantly makes him a wiser, more moral, and trustworthy person.

Then again, if we're going to use the argument: "Country X is having a lot of economic success, ergo that success must be on account of it's union policy, and we should emulate it", then we have to remember that Germany's but a mere shadow of the country that actually took Detroit's jobs: China! China is the creditor to most of the rest of the world. And they shoot union organizers dead in the streets.

I'm not saying *I* want to turn our country into Capitalist China, but taking your argument above to it's strictly logical conclusion, it looks like you'd agree that we should ban all unions and pay our workers three dollars a day.

So then, why don't you actually say something instead of just putting words in my proverbial mouth? I can't really even formulate a response to what's above, it isn't actually saying anything. Take another whack at it, and try to avoid mystical statements like "That's the nature of the global economy. Work goes where it can be done cheaply". It isn't, and it certainly doesn't have to. Plenty of German products are made in Germany, by the German people. They're made elsewhere, but they are also made in country. Their unemployment rate is about 1/2 of ours last year, and they have a fairly vibrant middle class. We have Detroit.

Remember back during SLAVERY when everything was perfect? Wages ruined all the good jobs.

Wow, you really are EVILHomer.

"China! China is the creditor to most of the rest of the world. And they shoot union organizers dead in the streets."

Yep. If workers in China, etc. were not forcibly prevented from unionizing, the world would look a lot different. It's not a case of fat-cat unions versus the wily free market, it's a case of paying people a reasonable wage versus government-enforced slave labor. The solution is not to try and out-slave-labor communist dictatorships.

But I should be clearer too, and answer Homers first questions more directly.

On point 1, no, unions do not materially contribute to outsourcing. I am not aware of a single software programmers union, yet somehow India became a global player doing what??? I can think of a few more counterexamples, but you get the idea yes?

On point 2, I'm offering the German system as an example of how to integrate the needs of the employees into the executive decisionmaking process. It does actually work, and I suggest it well worth looking into exactly how they did it.

The strangest anti-union argument I hear about Detroit auto manufacturing is that union workers were somehow responsible for the cars being crap.

This is often said in the same breath as something along the lines of such menial and skilless work not deserving the pay they got, since it's only tightening bolts and putting in screws.

I bet the people who designed these heaps (or who were directed to design them in the manner they did) are still grateful for the UAW deflector shield they've enjoyed all this time.

We have less than 100,000 people now so current lists don't include us statistically because we're not a metropolitan area anymore.

Ha ha ha. Fucking Newark, the only city on the list with a significantly higher murder rate than rape rate. Hooker's conclusion: Jersey trash is _way_ too easy for anyone to need to resort to rape.