Originally Posted by MontyB

Screw gold coins if there is a mob at my front door I will go with dynamite and a box of nails, $15 in a hardware store buys you about a 20 meter kill zone and awesome mob control.

Yeah but then you have to deal with that whole jail thing, and the conjugal visits is a myth so it's not as amazing as it sounds.

So you don't think "I didn't realise that there was a stick of dynamite in the box of nails when I set fire to it and tried to drop it on the mob at my door" will work?

How about "The power was out so I lit the rag in the end of this bottle of gasoline to see what the noise was but the mob saw it and I dropped it while attempting to run away"?

How about - 'it was very dark and I wanted to see if there was anyone out there,... your Honour....

Oh, and I was right out of gold coins- oops.

Originally Posted by DTop

Here's an interesting article concerning what may just be the major root cause of the problems in Detroit.

SOURCE

The $70 an hour claim has actually been debunked as inccurate.

SOURCE
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...n4630103.shtml

Summery:

But then what's the source of that $70 hourly figure? It didn't come out of thin air. Analysts came up with it by including the cost of all employer-provided benefits--namely, health insurance and pensions--and then dividing by the number of workers. The result, they found, was that benefits for Big Three cost about $42 per hour, per employee. Add that to the wages--again, $28 per hour--and you get the $70 figure. Voila.

Except ... notice something weird about this calculation? It's not as if each active worker is getting health benefits and pensions worth $42 per hour. That would come to nearly twice his or her wages. (Talk about gold-plated coverage!) Instead, each active worker is getting benefits equal only to a fraction of that--probably around $10 per hour, according to estimates from the International Motor Vehicle Program. The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted friday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."
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In essence one only arrives at the $70 an hour by adding all salaries, bonuses, benefits, pensions, etc of all the past living employees (retirees) and dividing it by the number of ACTIVE employees.

The actual wage of a autoworker is $28 an hour which is the same as the Japanese car manufacturers.

Originally Posted by Damien435

Unions have outlived their usefulness and have too much power over business in America. In Wadena, MN there is a company called Homecrest Outdoor Living, name is a bit of a misconception because they make indoor furniture as well as outdoor furniture, back to the point though. Homecrest cannot match their competitors prices because the market is being flooded with cheap furniture from China of almost identical quality, the cost of materials is the same for both Homecrest and their Chinese competitors but China has no unions and can keep costs down by keeping wages down.

Yes but what is the standard of living in China? Here?

Unions prevent this place from becoming China.

Unions have the power to pass minimum wage laws, bypassing Congress?

Originally Posted by Damien435

Unions have the power to pass minimum wage laws, bypassing Congress?

Unions have the power to lobby Congress to pass such laws, which they would probably never pass otherwise.

So does every other interest group in America, doesn't mean unions should be given special powers on top of that. Unions were necessary at one point, today their role is a remnant of a era that is long gone and unions, big business and government should be working together for the common good rather than every group fighting and scratching to defend its interests with no regard for the other two groups.

Yeah.
They're necessity but they do go too far at times. Like over here. My God the unions are excessive. Hyundai has one of the BEST paid workers in the whole country and they go on strike just about every year. It's no surprise that Hyundai's moving their factories to Eastern Europe and I think they have one in the United States as well. Americans are better workers.
I wished me and my military people could go on strike... so our kids could get some options for free college education. After all, our pay sucks, our health benefits are really "option to be a guinea pig," our retirement package is a joke, and all this despite the fact that the rest of the country is very much well off. And our equipment is falling apart and in some cases is worse than a lot of 3rd world country's armies. Mind you a few of it's excellent but seriously, a lot of it is just a disgrace.

I cannot describe my true feelings on bailouts here because I would surely be banned for my feelings. Everyday that bailout this and bailout that is in the news I want to go break something.

I firmly believe that bailouts are nothing more than rewarding those who have made irresponsible decisions. AIG gets bailed out, their executives go on a couple hundred thousand dollar spa retreat and a quail hunting expedition in England. Then they have the nerve to pay $500 million in bonuses that were due to employees over the last few years. Need I remind them that without a bailout the company could not have paid those bonuses.

If our government is going to embrace bailouts, I feel it should act like the FDIC does when it takes over a bank. When the FDIC takes over a faltering bank, the board of that bank is fired. Why? Because of bad management. If the big 3 get bailout out, those executives and the boards should get flushed down the toilet.

Just talking about this makes me so mad. I hate getting political but it was the democrats who support this more than the republicans. More democrats passed the first bailout as a percentage and most republicans are against the auto bailout. but people will give in to pressure and the next bailout will be passed.

When will this crap end? When will irresponsible companies stop being rewarded for bad decisions while good companies and tax payers bear the burden of bad business decisions.

Thank you to the US government for wasting billions. You have done the Forefathers of this country proud