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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (541635)	1/7/2010 3:19:10 PM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1577194

>>Do you have a defined benefit pension plan? >Of course I do, but that has nothing to do with my original analogy. No, wait. Defined benefit or a retirement account, like a 401(k)? >The Big Three offered their employees overly generous retirement benefits. We can all agree to that. I can't. Things were different in this country back when those plans were put in place. First of all, the demand for labor was very high, so the retirement packages and health benefits were in lieu of higher pay. Second, people put their entire lives in the hands of those companies and the not-so-tacit understanding was that if they devoted their lives to those companies, they'd be taken care of. They anchored themselves to the industrial Midwest when there were bigger opportunities in other areas of the country. Detroit, Lansing, et al were essentially "company towns." They traded opportunity for security, and those trades benefitted not only their companies, but the country as a whole. >Now that the Big Three are in the red, you want to bail them out because you feel like otherwise you'd be taking away their retirement benefits. No, that's not entirely it. That's a part of it, but not all of it. Letting the Big Three suddenly go under would unemploy not just their employees, but those of the parts companies, the dealers, all of the businesses supported by people, and destroy hundreds of towns and cities in short order. Not to mention eradicating a sector of our economy that actually makes something, and something important. And why? Because of a few bad quarters, the worst of which were due to an economic downturn? Ford is now back in the black. GM looks like it's on its way. We would've let all of those bad things happen? >But that's a stupid line of thinking. It's their responsibility, not ours. We all share some responsibility for each other. It's what makes us a f**king society, Tench... >Since we bailed them out, we have sent the message to corporations all across the nation. Go ahead and make promises you cannot keep. If you become "too big to fail," the government will bail you out. All you have to do is hold the livelihood of thousands of employees at your mercy. Yeah, well, it was an unfortunate necessity. Where the Obama administration has not come through is in taking the steps so that it won't happen again. It's terrible that the Big Three absorbed what were once dozens of brands. The administration should be trying to break up those companies so they can compete with one another. We need to put limits on how large companies can grow amidst a lack of competition. We need to minimize the incentives for companies to merge just for increased shareholder value and higher executive compensation at the expense of our economy. But to put hundreds of thousands of seniors on the street and unravel our economy just to support a selfish Randian theory of the markets? Ridiculous. -Z