Great article, and very thought provoking. The problem with Trump isn't with him being an outsider, it is that he is a lout. He is also lacking in obvious deliberation and thoughtful decision making. He frightens the hell out of people who cannot imagine him being in control of the military...(THE effing BOMB). If he became President I could see resignations in the professional military leadership. How can you respect such a man? I think he would also find ways to further enrich himself on the public teat.
Anyway...regarding statement "and they want that older country back." And how did that older country provide the wages and working conditions of years past?
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... c-support/"As of last year, however, only 11.3% of wage and salary workers belonged to unions, down from 20.1% in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (At their peak in 1954, 34.8% of all U.S. wage and salary workers belonged to unions, according to the Congressional Research Service.) While the unionization rate among public-sector workers has held fairly steady over that 30-year span (just over a third of government workers are unionized), it’s plummeted in the private sector — from 16.8% in 1983 to 6.7% three decades later. The reasons for that decline are many and heatedly debated — from the impact of globalization on U.S. manufacturing to intense hostility from businesses to unions’ relative lack of success in organizing service- and information-industry workers."
And:
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-blue ... ing-2012-1"But we should have all seen this coming. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going to happen once you put American workers into the same labor pool as slave laborers on the other side of the world. After all, what greedy corporate executive really wants to pay U.S. workers ten to twenty times as much compensation just because it is the "right" thing to do?
Today, formerly great cities all over America are being transformed into hellholes while shiny, new industrial cities are popping up all over China.
For example, a couple of decades ago the Chinese city of Shenzhen was a sleepy little fishing town.
In 2012, it is a teeming metropolis of over 13 million people.
Foxconn (the builder of iPhones, iPads and many other products that we buy) runs a factory in Shenzhen that employs over 400,000 people. Most of those people work for about a dollar an hour."
Which Means: (from 2008 article)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/weeki ... .html?_r=0That basic wage blossomed first in the auto industry in 1948 and served, in effect, as a banner in the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union. As the news media frequently noted, salt-of-the-earth American workers were earning enough to pay for comforts that their counterparts behind the Iron Curtain could not afford.
As the years passed, unions succeeded in negotiating this basic wage not as an ultimate goal but as an early rung in their wage ladders. That was the union standard, particularly in heavy industries, and in the early postwar decades nonunion employers fell into line, spreading middle-class incomes broadly through the service sector.
“The most important model that rolled off the Detroit assembly lines in the 20th century,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley, “was the middle class for blue-collar workers.”
The high point came in the 1970s, just as the United States was beginning to lose its controlling grip on the economies of the non-Communist world. Since then the percentage of people earning at least $20 an hour has eroded in every sector of the economy, falling last year to 18 percent of all hourly workers from 23 percent in 1979 — a gradual unwinding of the post-World War II gains.
My statement:
The continual attack on Unions and unionization has been bought into by almost all segments of society. Business controls the press, media, and political process. Plus, people do not like to think that they would need a Union; that they will be appreciated for who they are and what they bring to the table. Guess what? The company owners, for the most part, naturally look out for themselves and their familes. Why wouldn't they? Once the political process was taken over by big business and off shoring was allowed, the final result is pretty obvious. A worker will not, and cannot be paid a decent wage by any company forced to compete with sub-standard wage rates in other countries.
Years ago I was flying some US helicopter pilots into a coastal logging camp. One of them left a US forestry publication in the plane. I saw an add that roughly said: "Tired of high labour costs? Do you need to bring down your labour costs? Try using our Mexican forestry workers and regain your advantage"!! This was in the early 90s.
So, the battles will have to be fought all over again. People grew complacent and believed they would be well paid forever, because they deserved to be. They either did not know, or forgot that people died for Sundays off, a 10 then 8 hour day, a forty hour week, stat holidays....whatever. And now this will have to be fought in a tougher arena and in a time of energy constraints. I would imagine it will be impossible to ever regain decent standards for wage earners in this environment. Trump(s) appear to be a magic shortcut. I'm sure Hitler had the same allure. I talked with a German refugee who became friends with my parents decades after WW2. My Dad was in D-Day (about day 3, I think) and my mom was an overseas nurse in the Canadian military. Anyway, her German friend said," we were starving, we had no jobs. And then Hitler came along and we thought he was wonderful. The factories re-opened, people had food and even cars". Of course we all know how that turned out, don't we?
I try and buy Canadian or USA tools and products whenever possible (although I do have an old Toyota PU). I shop local. I buy a Union made products whenever possible. I never shop at Walmart. I also don't shop at stores that treat their workers like shit, (In Canada that would be Sobeys).
Just an aside, I have never met a cranky or unsmiling employee at Costco: "Organized by the Teamsters, Costco is union-friendly and meets workers on an even playing field when it comes to bargaining, and as union members, they have a say in the terms and conditions of their employment. For more than 20 years, they have stood together to ensure their rights as workers are protected.Oct 30, 2013"
http://www.ufcw.org/2013/10/30/costco-a ... ifference/And in case anyone wants to know, I have worked Union for 1/2 my life and non-Union for the other half. I have been both a Union and non-Union carpenter, pilot, sawmill worker, and teacher. The best job I ever had was non-union, flying for a friend of mine. I was treated with respect and was well paid. The worst job I ever had was a union pilot. I unionized the company because we were treated so shitty, (Teamsters 213). It was still shitty because the boss/owner was nasty mean and if he could screw people he did. Mind you, the wages and benefits improved, though. (I still quit and moved on). Mostly, it is about respect. When past employers have been short on cash and needed help I worked for nothing to help them out or until they could pay me.
People are angry because they are being shafted by a system that plays favourites for the connected. It is class warfare....all-over-again.
regards and "have a great Christmas" to all you fine people
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