“Comrades”? Nah, that’s communism

so we’re not doin the commie thing ???

does that mean we DON’T gotta learn The Internationale ???

cuz I could still cancel the lessons

and I got a shitlaod of red dye I gotta unload on the open market too …

Above all, I personally want to thank Marcy, and this community, for the support you’ve given us over the past six months. Clearly, GM is in a difficult situation, however, it’s great to know there are people out there providing thoughtful, intelligent commentary on the state of the industry. I will continue to enjoy the debate and discourse!

Robert Reich
May 31, 2009, 9:37PM

His Part 2 is now up. Nice plug for education so that the symbolic-analytic workforce “will have the highest standard of living and be the most competitive internationally.” And, according to him, there will be “no finite amount of symbolic-analytic work to be parceled out around the globe.” But what about those who will not be able to function in the “symbolic-analytic workforce”?

“More and more of our working people finds themselves in the local service economy — in hotels, hospitals, restaurant chains, and big-box retailers — earning low wages with little or no benefits. Unions could help raise their wages by giving them more bargaining leverage. A higher minimum wage and larger Earned Income Tax Credit could help as well.

. . .

“Some argue that even if I’m correct about all this, the erosion of traditional manufacturing impedes the capacity of Americans to learn important symbolic-analytic tasks, because such learning depends on an intimate understanding of the manufacturing process. . . . But most symbolic analysts do not. Whatever they need to learn about manufacturing can usually be discovered online.

[So, the internet will deliver knowledge necessary for successful symbolic-analysts in the workforce and the unions will make everything ok for those in the service sector. But make no mistake about it–manufacturing in the US is a lost cause:]

” . . . that’s exactly where I depart from those who believe we need to protect or bring back traditional manufacturing in the United States. To do so would be enormously costly. I just don’t get how those costs can possibly be justified.”

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsme…..hp?ref=fpd

What is going on here?

I disagree with this use of the term “socialists”. US corporate boards are already packed with socialite socialists–the sort of apparatchniks and parasites that wrecked the USSR, but without the hammer and sickle.

We need to infiltrate the GM board with some actual businessmen for a change.

Corporations need people that understand that you make money by hiring, training, and retaining the best workers to design and build the best products, not by beancounting, laying people off, and playing games with the books.

Too many of our so-called private-sector pundits forget that capitalism started as a movement for redistributing wealth equitably and creating the greatest good for the greatest number.

For Reich to cite Agribiz as a successful biz model in such a way is intellectually dishonest and abbhorent.

How many of you who have commented in this thread have worked for the auto industry, whether for an automaker, for a supplier, or for a dealer?

Factory job losses may be as inevitable as losses on the farm or in dmoestic service. They needn’t be accelerated by tolerance for slash-burn-and-liquidate business models or by government subsidizing them via unenforced labor laws, look the other way “enforcement” of anti-trust laws, and trade policies that do more for global investment managers than those who live and work in this country.

I almost thought I was reading a column by David Brooks, after he’d attended a writing seminar.