Michael Moore Teaches Rahm Emanuel a F**cking Economics Lesson

That is a funny picture, no matter what your political bend is.

I agree! Why have debate with those damned working class vermin when you can just fog it all up with stupid pictures? I love it!

Sorry, didn't realize we couldn't laugh and debate at the same time.

Yes, and we can always trust the corporate owned government to treat the workers fair. Serious fail.

Yes, I agree with you. The problem is that there is no answer then. We have to pick one human made system one way or the other. Corporations will screw the workers, Unions will cause the companies to fail, and the government can't be trusted. What is the fourth option that I am not seeing?

YES, all options can suck and can be ridicules to the workers. However, politics that are local are the most effective. Unions are effectively locally controlled. I will trust my neighbor to vote with me for higher wages and benefits at out jobs, then some conservative corporate crack head in Washington or a sweeping economic system of some sort.
Here is the example. When Unions were strong in this country there was a growing middle class and the US was the economic envy of the world. Unions YES!

I agree. We shouldn't let our emotions cloud the fact that these companies had developed failing business models. Let the market take them down.

Really...they belong in a museum and not on the market...+^d

I agree bad businesses should fail, after all, we can always export all our jobs overseas which in effect says all businesses in the US are failures. After all they can do it cheaper, with slave labor sometimes. In fact by your logic of Natural Selection Economics, the US should fail. Serious fail.

I understand your criticisms, so what would your fix be?

You might want to re -examine that. The argument that we should reward corruption because of your distaste for the Chinese isn’t very persuasive.

I did not argue that. You have a wild take! LOL! Can I have whatever it is your smoking?

The people need to stop listening to conservatives that would inslave them, then get off their dead asses, join the Unions, and vote in mass to change laws that outlaw unions today. Do you know unions are outlawed in China, and were in the Soviet Union? See how well that worked out for the vast majority of workers?
When half the people in the US were in Unions in the US, we had prosparity. That ended in 1977 when unions got so weak they could not get real wages to keep up with inflation. Add Reaganomics union busting and tinkle down economics and here we are, the Great Depression number two.

Please try hard to focus and articulate argument. Because my comment was specifically about not rewarding corrupt business.

And you replied with comment about the labor conditions in China. There are not many logical connections you make to my comment and yours other than rewarding corrupt business in America helps with working conditions in China. I hope you are not honestly trying to make this argument.

Now if you intended your comment to stand on its own and replied to me by mistake I understand. But otherwise your comment does not touch and concern any of the material in my comment unless you plan on adding more to it in a subsequent reply.

Okay, I apologies for a bad choice of words by using China as an example. When it comes to foreign policy, historically China has had a better model then ours over it‘s history. Although recently I think they are losing a grip on that. But I digress.
I have a feeling we actually are on a similar track here in our thinking. Like I said in another reply, “Free Trade” (of our businesses over seas to other countries) is the plague that is putting the last nail in the coffin of the US. Fair Trade, not Free Giveaway I say.
We need to stop “Free Trade” and get unions working again so the workers can bust their assess to keep the corporation healthy, and so keep themselves in a higher standard of living.
The economic model the US has today aka Reaganomics, only feeds the short term profits of large stock holders and has no allegiance to our country. F them, America FIRST, end Free Trade, Unions YES!

I partially agree. If the economy was different I would say let them fail. But when your unemployment rate is dancing around the double digit number you need to do what you can to keep that figure down. Double digit unemployment could have caused the scales to tip too much and lead to more unemployment quickly. Too many people would suffer and the recovery would be much slower.

On the other hand maybe the country needs a depression to make us rethink our inefficiencies. If I did not have children I would say fail them all and let God sort them out.

Let me make it clear that I am not anti-union, I have a union job. I am an elementary school teacher and enjoy a great many perks that my union has provided for me, and I don't think it should ever be against the law to form a union. Let me make it clear that I also don't disagree that Reaganomics is stupid. I also think that free trade is a horrible idea. Hopefully this clears up any possible future misconceptions about our discussion. I have heard that the US was pretty great in the 70's. I wasn't alive then, so I don't have any first hand experience.

I have also heard of some ridiculous stories about union abuses, especially with American auto manufacturers and have seen some pretty horrible teachers protected when they should have been fired. You can't tell me that unions are the end-all and be-all fix for our economic woes and that companies should never be allowed to fail.

I strongly dislike seeing honest hard working people fired in order to fatten the boss man's pocket.

I strongly dislike watching worthless employees protected by my union, when I know people who are hard working and can't find a job.

Some companies fail because they fail, and not because of child labor from India.

Once again, I am not anti-union nor do I give much credence to conservative double speak.

Those god damned overpaid auto workers. They must be living it up with all that excess cash. BOTH union and non union auto workers in the US get paid a whopping average of $15 an hour. Of course the non union workers do not have as good benefits, or retirement, but they should just be happy to have a job. F, export it all to China if they pick a bitch!
Cars made in the United States today are second to none in technology. They are also being bought up by the world. It is a come back and the auto corps. have even paid back our loans with interest years ago, the basterds! But it sucks for American auto stock holders. They are so exploited and only dream of the day they can pay what they want, fire without cause, and export the entire business to China.
BUT HAPPY DAY! Thanks to the Party of NO, soon everyone will be willing to work for food, just like the Great Depression.
Hey, let’s face it, for the wealthy the Great Depression was GREAT! If we get that next Great Depression going again, that will get the US competitive to China. Then there will be more jobs! Thank God the economy is bad; we can kill those pesky unions once and for all, and get the cheapest most submissive labor in the world.
God I love conservative economics! If you do not, then you hate America and apologies for terrorists. Idiots.

If American automotive technology were second to none (or if that technology were being put to use), then the Amercan auto industry would not be in the situation it is in today...period.

As I said before, unions aren't the cause of the decline of the American automotive industry. Bad management is.

If American industry can't figure that one maxim out, then they deserve to be outsourced to China...and it's why I (along with millions of other investors) wouldn't waste a dime of my money on American Auto stocks. And I totally resent the idea of my government spending my tax dollars recapitalizing companies whose stock I refused to buy.

If management doesn't wish to create an environment conducive to investment, then that's their problem...not mine.

And what exactly does either the party of NO or the party of YES really have to do with a business staying in business? At the end of the day, it comes down to providing goods and services that people will buy. If I provided shitty services to my clients, then I wouldn't have any clients--the same standard should apply to cars.

When Unions were strong the workers had power in the factories to keep stupid management decisions at a minimum. I mean the workers had a bread and butter interest in speaking out to get the corporation working top notch. Today if you open your mouth at work you are fired even if the boss is running the business into the ground. That is all because you have no power in the work place because there are few unions you can join.
Here is a question. Why in gods name would you ever believe, “If American industry can't figure that one maxim out, then they deserve to be outsourced to China” ???
Even a job plunking along barely making it, is better then no job at all. American first, remember? DO NOT kill the job; improve the company with Union input and power. Those workers want the corporation to win, win, win, because then the workers win.
BTW, Free Trade (of our businesses over seas to other countries) is the plague that is putting the last nail in the coffin of the US. Fair Trade, not Free Giveaway I say.

Unions are still pretty damned strong. Sadly, union employees are still at the mercy of their management--and it's the American management buisness model that needs to go. This management model rewards incompetence. Where else, but America, can CEOs get paid multimillion dollar salaries for running their respective companies into the ground?

You certainly don't see CEOs of German auto companies (who are unionized, have some of the best pay and benefits packages, and are worker oriented) bitching about their golden parachutes, marble-floored offices and private jets.

Look at Korea and Japan. There isn't as great a disparity between managerial salaries and workers' salaries as there is in the United States. Moreover, if their management fails to produce, they get demoted or flat-out fired!!! They don't blame their problems on their workers.

As I said before, I think it's a shitty thing that American workers have to bear the brunt of their management's incompetence. I don't want to see workers lose their jobs. However, I don't want to see the last vestiges of American industry destroyed by a system that is an obvious failure--and if that means having to shut down and start over again, then so be it.

Unions are not strong. Only 15.4 of the workers in the US are in unions. Union workers want the corp to succeed, so they the workers can succeed. Otherwise, I agree that management is way out of control.
I do not get the psychology that some CEO has to be paid billions of dollars, when we can easily get a person with equal or better business skill to do the same job for a few hundred thousand dollars a year. It is all political corporate BS.
Here is a perfect example I am very close too. This guy I know is the new CEO of a local company. A cop I know checked his background. This SOB has run every company he has run in Reno into the ground. So why does he keep getting new CEO jobs? Nepotism.
The company he is killing now was just a few steps away from monopoly. The workers, who made the company so powerful, were all fired. The new CEO is taking most of the profits for himself.
If Nevada was not a “Right to Work” state, aka Right to Screw the Worker State, the union could have saved that company and all those jobs as they would have had say in keeping the company a success. But no. No union, no corporate supervision, no worker input, no company, no job.
The fruits of Reaganomics.

You are absolutely correct about nepotism (I prefer to call it cronyism) in American business. There are too many of these management types who fuck a company and then go on to fuck another--all the while touting their managerial experience. It is an oligarchical system that has corrupted itself to the point of dragging our entire economy down with it. I see it here in the NYC area every day.

The financial industry provides an even better example of this crap than does the automotive industry.

Unions ARE strong though. Their leadership has just fallen victim to the same fat-cat mentality that plagues American industry. They still represent their membership, but could use a little more incentive to get off their asses and make some real demands!

One thing that I think made unions more about collecting dues as opposed to genuine representation of their members' interests was their lobbying of state legislatures in establishing "closed shop" states. By enacting laws compelling workers to join a union, union bosses became complacent and corrupt. These bosses became as corrupt as their managerial counterparts.

Nobody should be forced to join a union. They should want to be in a union! Coercion destroys the very essence as to why people unionized and stood up to their employers in the first place.

What is even worse is that certain states remain "closed shop" while other remain "right to work." Since right to work has come to be, unions have become much more democratic than they once were--and they were just as nepotistic as any example you provided. The result is that some locals have to work hard for their members while others get a free ride--just the same as the workers who don't pay union dues get the same benefits as those who do.

Those are all additionally good arguments. I ding you up sir! ^!!! :)

I agree completely...

What do you think is the difference between Liberalism and Progressivism? To my mind they are different ways of saying the same thing.

United Parcel Service seems to be doing pretty damned well. Hell, they even have to compete against the government in the form of the USPS.

The airline industry: Pilot unions are crucial in defending and holding pilots accountable. Unions are CRITICAL for airline safety.

So, there you go ayipiss, that's two.

This is exactly why they are losing billions a year.

Lies, as usual from the usual suspects.

that is what they are trying to do..they are getting rid of greedy union workers..

Yes, and all those auto salesmen are union workers. Lies as usual from the usual suspect.

Good post, +'d. Bailing out failing companies violates the laws of Capitalism.

But unions will die if the capitalism has its way! We need a safety net from the government (like bailouts) to secure their existence. I'm sorry but comment voted down.

I did not say anything about capitalist absolutism.

I said I agree we have a need for unions to protect workers.
But individual businesses come and go, it's a fact of life.

If a business, no mater how huge, is ill managed and makes crappy products, why should our tax dollars go to keeping that company alive?

Our tax dollars should go to scholarships and trade schools, so when people lose their jobs, they can get new ones.

Our tax dollars should go to small business incentives so those employees can start new companies that learn from the mistakes of the past.

We should not pay bad management and bad designers and bad engineers to continue to do crappy work.

Excellent Post +^d

We aren't protecting business, we are protecting the Unions something you don't care to understand about. This is exactly why bush and obama did the auto bailout, so workers wouldn't be subjected to the market and could be protect by the unions.

Can't agree more. Tesla actually approached the big auto companies awhile back with his ideas, and they told him to go somewhere else. Now his company is producing vehicles abroad (Northern Europe).

Again, you keep writing posts as replies to me, when they have nothing to do with anything I said.

Well, it's obvious you don't give a damn about the AIDS crisis in Africa, and don't care to learn anything about it.

FYI- Tesla Motors get's it's name from the famous scientist Nikola Tesla, not from it's founder.

This is one of the best articulations of the Austrian School of Economics opposition to the Bush/Obama bailouts.

I think that "At Will" contracts are the way to go. I am a public school teacher, and we could definitely let some of the bad teachers I work with go, but the union protects them regardless of their performance levels.

I agree with that Sparky!

Michael Moore has only had two Documentaries that I thought were worth watching. Roger and Me was depressing and very entertaining at the same time. I also thought that Fahrenheit 9/11 was both entertaining and very educational.

He's likely too busy lisening to the sound of counting coin, and
protecting the status quo. He knows who butters his bread. In
Dante's Inferno, the depiction of greed holds it that the souls
in perdition are condemned to count Gold coins in a gilded bird
cage for eternity. We can at least content ourselves to know that
as virtue is its own reward, then vice is its own punishment. There's
a certain rough Justice in my having Gold fever too, but unlike the
typical uberrich, knowing i can't take it with me.

+^d

http://Current.com

Before they can accomplish that important move...(moving is stationary
in the Orwellian war without end TV surveilance culture)...they'd have to
change the term " Government oversight " to accountability. The term
oversight now invariably means "overlooking" because intelligence is
ignorance. The Corporation Party bought the Republicans long ago.
And the Democrats had to compete with them, as any sports team would.

As Jubal once commented(paraphrased) Once the American people wake
up and realized they're being played by politicians by voting and keeping
the pendulum swinging back and forth between both teams, then they'll
realize the dominance of the Corporation Party has kept the pendulum
still. The point is " change " is an illusion. The Government is a tool of the
Corporations and their Corporate Party, owned by the 1% uberrich. When
10,000 people out of 300 Million make 30% of the earnings, their earnings
are burnings. CEOs used to be constrained to make a reasonable amount
based on the factor of the lowest wages of the company's actual producers.
But since the 1980 attitude that greed is good, that honest practice is no more.

The top dogs want to globalize wages by outsourcing American jobs to China
because they know they can pay them dirt wages and cheat Americans out
of their standard of living. The standard of living that unions have maintained
is crumbling with the hyperinflation caused by their 96 year old sellout to the
Banksters' Fed. Their credit based economy & monentary system is absolutely
Anti Constitutional and UnAmerican because it's a fiat money Ponzi Scheme
intended to allow the uberrich to convert our time & work product into their
Gold holdings. They've been squeezing us like a tube of toothpaste by putting
our money on a debt based negative standard which is uncontrolable. Their
Fed Trojan Horse could not convert the USA into their mega Corporation by
allowing our Treasury Dept. to coin money on a Constitutional value based
standard because that would make us too strong for them to subvert sucessfuly.

I have Email blogged & starred articles posted here on Current.com which assert
that miniture Thorium power sources could end the USA's enslavement to oil
within a decade. Do you see anyone in power, protecting the status quo which
has lubed them into office, rushing out to effect this as change you can believe in ?
Because if you do, there's a bridge in Brooklyn that the politician hos would like
to sell you too. Like the Monsanto, Du Pont people, they've adopted the crooked
lying habit of selling us things they don't own. That's why Michael Moore's articles
are one of my few, selected Google gadgets, and not Rahm Emanuels. As the
Grateful Dead once put it: " Some folks trust in reason. some folks trust in might.
I trust in nothing(but God) 'cause I know it'll turn out right. " Though not in our lifetimes.

While we are at it why not have the CEO's of companies who have their calls handled by call center's in India or the Philippines. hanged, drawn and quartered.

http://Current.com

To be honest, I don't exactly know why. I always opt for the " No immage "
option when the roboitic program is flagged by my mentionof Current.com.
Yet like a bubble floating through water to the surface, some immage seems
to always pop in anyway. Thanks for reminding me. I've deleted it now.

good idea now your getting it

LOL