The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: franksolich on December 15, 2011, 12:40:47 PM
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/100220665
Oh my.
NNN0LHI (63,562 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
Anyone care to know when this economic decline we are in now began?
During the 1980's Reagan convinced a lot of useful idiots that unions were their enemy. I can remember this like it was yesterday. First he fired the union air traffic controllers and that set everything in motion. Next thing I knew Rush Limbaugh began referring to us as those, "lazy, overpaid union autoworkers", and a lot of people just ate that shit up and next thing I knew I was out of a job for a total of almost 6 years.
Because we had managed to negotiate a living wage with good benefits many were easily convinced that us union workers were the enemy. Back then we were hated worse than the bankers are hated right now. Because we had the temerity to go on strike and negotiate decent wages and benefits we became the enemy. Now the same thing is happening to pretty much everyone.
That is when this began though.
Don
ChairmanAgnostic (22,214 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
1. 2004
that's when the inequality of income began to rear its ugly head, and from that point on, wages were stagnant, people began to refinance and get equity loans, simply to keep heads above water.
2008 was when it was painfully obvious that Bush ****ed things up worse than Perry on a televised debate.
NNN0LHI (63,562 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
4. That may very well be when the inequality of income began for you?
Began for me about 20 years before then.
That is a fact.
Yeah, yeah, sure it did, Don.
madokie (31,597 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
7. As a 4 year dozer operator in '77
I made more per hour than most young people are making today if they're in manufacturing or construction. The inequity in wages started way earlier than 2004.
thats all I'm sayin'
deutsey (14,684 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
2. Yep...the Reagan Reaction is what set it off
GoCubsGo (7,581 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
3. No, it all started when the Democrats took control of the House in 2006.
It's all Barney Frank's and Chris Dodd's fault.
Wish I could get these propagandized morons who surround me to understand what you just wrote.
90-percent (4,103 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
5. Gambling
Reagan simply gambled with the lives of the entire flying public when he broke the PATCO Union. Think of the political landscape had a few Air traffic Controller "replacements" directed a few 747's straight into a mountainside or something?
Ronnie rolled the dice with our lives and won and we now enjoy the fruits of his efforts.
PS - I have been in some big union shops in the north east. Some are so regulated that it can take hours to complete a task that should take minutes. Some union foment games about filing grievances and doing everything possible to gum up the works.
But, in historical context, Unions are the reason America enjoyed middle class prosperity until only a few decades ago.
the core issue is:
OUR INSTITUTIONS ARE INFESTED WITH GREEDY AND CORRUPT SOCIOPATHS
Because in modern corporate and institutional structures, the most aggressive and self serving combatants win.
madokie (31,597 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
6. I remember it well
to show he meant business he gave all the traffic controllers their walking papers. Its been all down hill since then.
We have to realize that raygun wasn't anything, for the most part, except a mouth piece for the same crew that were dick and w's crew of misfits, traitors and outright crooks
Overseas (9,544 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
8. You can see the trend of the rebirth of plutocracy from Reagan's era onward in this famous chart
http://www.businessinsider.com/plutocracy-reborn
It shows how the gap between rich and poor, decreased after FDR's reforms, grew back again as more and more of those reforms were undercut and by 2006 was as bad as it was before the crash of the Great Depression.
comipinko (94 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
9. The de-regulation of investment banks was a very big contributor.
NNN0LHI (63,562 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
10. Did that have something to do with me being laid off just short of 6 years during the 1980's?
I hope grouchy old Don made it into the Top Ten primitives of 2011 so I can write his award, reminding him of his, uh, selective memory and false nostalgia.
comipinko (94 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
11. I don't know, What where you laid-off from?
NNN0LHI (63,562 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
13. Union autoworker
comipinko (94 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
14. Seems to me, you are a victim of the corporatist's policy called "free trade" . Thank the continual control of our government by corporatists from both parties.
pampango (10,421 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
15. "Free trade" couldn't have had much to do with NNN0LHI being laid off for 6 years in the 1980's.
The US' first 'free trade' deal was with Canada and took effect 1/1/89.
comipinko (94 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
16. Do you really think that the "blind eye" to the asian "dumping" of subsidized autos
has nothing to to with "corporatist free traders"? Same folks.
PETRUS (1,535 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
12. You are right that things pivoted starting around that time.
And union-busting is a big part of it. But there are several other policy areas that had an impact. Various forms of "deregulation," Treasury and Fed policies that favor finance over work, trade agreements that protect the interests of elites but encourage a race to the bottom for labor, etc. These things started under Carter, got a big push and heavy PR under Reagan, and have continued since.
prairierose (1,514 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
17. 1981...Reagan tax cuts.....and destruction of PATCO
mistertrickster (6,535 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
18. Amen, my brother. Union membership in private business is down to 7 percent.
Wages have been stagnant--despite productivity skyrocketing--for the same period.
Cause ----> effect.
On edit: Despite the unions having been eviscerated and left for dead, they are still the cause of all our problems according to the Cons.
Yeah, yeah.
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Good lord. I just don't know what to say to that much stupid. Amazing.
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What is with these ****ing idiots and PATCO? Those fools broke the law and paid the price. Get over it.
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We in the real world know that it all started in 2007 right after the democrat party go control of the HOR and senate.
Timelines, they are a bitch DUn.
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Timelines, they are a bitch DUn.
What's funny is the way grouchy old Don mixes up bad times of the 1970s with Reagan and the Republicans, and good times of the 1980s with Carter and the Democrats.
It takes some real mental gymnastics--or premature senility--to do that sort of thing.
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NNN0LHI
Because we had managed to negotiate a living wage with good benefits many were easily convinced that us union workers were the enemy. Because we had the temerity to go on strike and negotiate decent wages and benefits we became the enemy.
You were and still are the enemy of working Americans.
The unions had a very poor reputation in the late 70's and early 80's based upon the actions of their members during the early and mid-1970's. You see Don primitive, I remember the Teamster strikes where truckers were intentionally driving slow in the freeways in order to hold up traffic, and when they were overturning and setting cars on fire in protests, etc... I remember when the UMWA would go on strike demanding more while threatening people wouldn't have the energy of coal in order to heat their homes during the winter. Ditto for the Steel Workers. You can't hold good and decent Americans over the barrel demanding more and disrupting their lives without them, in turn, having a negative viewpoint of you.
The unions made their own bed and they're still reaping the rewards of their own stupidity of believing people couldn't live without them. Shove it, Don.
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Industrial unions can't do nearly as much damage to the country as they did pre-Reagan. They pretty much succeeded in destroying the competitiveness of the industries they dominated, and most of the companies that survived have gone offshore, and concentrated domestic investment in right-to-work states.
The most severe damage now is being done by public-sector unions, who have teamed up with democrat politicians to bankrupt cities, counties, and states.
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madokie (31,597 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
7. As a 4 year dozer operator in '77
I made more per hour than most young people are making today if they're in manufacturing or construction. The inequity in wages started way earlier than 2004.
thats all I'm sayin'
Yes, and you made more than I did and I OWNED THE DAMN DOZERS. ...or at least owed for the damn things which you didn't.
Thank you Jimmy "peanut brain" Carter.
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deutsey (14,684 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail
2. Yep...the Reagan Reaction is what set it off
What the hell were the democrats doing all those years when they held the WH and congress?
What about all those glowing fables we are regaled with about Bubba's balanced budget?