June 21, 2009

Unemployment enhances economic depression, not solves it.

Somebody needs to explain to me the wisdom of Chrysler plants being shut down. I understand the company was so utterly mismanaged that they are bankrupt. What I don't get is what happened to all the bail-out money and why those who are not responsible for the screw-ups are the ones paying the price. By cutting more jobs, Chrysler is adding to the problem of unemployed workers falling flat on their faces. What they should be considering about their own bottom line, which is all they ever care about, is that if people don't have jobs they don't have money. If they don't have money they don't buy your product.

Michael Moore has posited quite rightly that these plants should not be allowed to be shut down and the jobs destroyed. Instead, the costly but long term more beneficial choice is to retool the plants for manufacturing new good. Don't make cars, but make something else. It would be unreasonable and untenable to rework them into factories for warfare, but all of that hardware and the skilled labor force could be used to make other goods that Americans do need. In a single stroke you make the company viable through the manufacturing of goods that we need, you keep people from drawing on Unemployment, and you keep money circulating through the economy at a time when it is needed most.

What bothers me about the way the Obama administration has been handling the auto and banking bail-outs is that they clearly favor those who have done wrong by us, the people. I'd like to know where the change is. What I see is business as usual. The fat-cat robber-barons live high on the hog while we drown in a mire of filth that is their making. In a time of radical change we need genuine leadership. We need a new way of thinking and doing. What we have is a president who has done so little for the people that it becomes hard to trust him that "change is coming."

What we need to see is the creation of good wage paying jobs with benefits that would actually make some sense. The American Worker is neither lazy nor stupid, but the American Worker can not afford to be taken for granted either. With the export of so many of our jobs to foriegn lands, it is critical that we revive the manufacturing of goods and provide reasons for business to keep jobs in America. Without good pay, fair hours, decent benefits, and job security along with an ethically run and responsible employer we can fight back the economic decline that serves to do nothing more but eradicate the middle class and elevate the elitists to a position of divinely inspired authority under a fuedal system.