as a non-union inspector of union work, by union workers who made on average twice, but often as much as 3 or 4 times my hourly wage, and having myself taken a 12 percent paycut for two years before a lay-off aligned with my interest in getting a second degree resulted in me returning to college,
i give everyone credit for having at least two active braincells, whether they deserve it or not.
we've been doing this to ourselves for longer than any of us have been alive. we are the victims of our own success and we always seem surprised when, believing our own hype, those in power take advantage of our naivete. what on earth were we thinking when we took for granted that a single nation should spread across the entire continent? i suppose it was almost excusable in an age of conquest, but the monster it created has come back to haunt us. with abundant resources and no troublesome neighbors to keep us in check, it's no wonder we thought so highly of ourselves. the post ww2 boom was perhaps the most destructive blow to our nation's ethos. newly christened as the leader and protector of the free world, we allowed the power of the sole intact major nation in the world to get away from us. the infrastructure of the welfare state was already in place, thanks to fdr's handiwork, and we simply allowed ourselves to be taken care of and taken over by a federal government which had seen us through two world wars and promised us invincibility. with a new threat, communism, to lend credence to the state's demands for increasing control, we fell into our apathy gradually and its natural outcome is the nation we see today. a nation with its might spread thinly across the globe and its people, feeling they deserve only the best, willing to stand by and allow an increasingly unruly bureaucracy free rein.
take a class on reading comprehension. cheap labor had no part in the housing collapse and no one is saying it did. the accessibility of illegal immigrant labor contributed to both the falling construction wages and the unemployment of millions of american workers, but it was the demand for increased home ownership and the necessary loosened lending requirements that led to the housing market's collapse. that demand was made at the federal level, all for the sake of making us feel better about ourselves and garnering a few extra votes at the polls. you're right, the government couldn't make those lenders approve those loans, but it could make life unbearable for those who refused to go along with the plan. look to the success of ge, a giant in the lending industry, for a sample of the perks of going with the flow. its profits barely felt a bump as the nation reeled and its chairman finds himself at bambam's elbow, a favored position that enables him to secure even greater benefits for g.e. and for himself. blame the banks all you want, they most certainly deserve it, but reserve some of that scorn for the masterminds of our economy's demise.
get a clue, buy a vowel, do whatever it takes to garner some small inkling of what a free marketplace really is. once the state begins making demands of it, expanded home ownership in this case, it ceases to be free. it is under the control of the state and those demands. its reactions are to those mandates and the people themselves have lost control of it. perhaps you should look up the definition of anarchism so you don't seem such a dolt in the future.
making excuses for union thuggery seems to be a full time job. while i'm by no means "in the know" concerning this affair, this isn't a matter of hiring out-of-towners. they contracted with a company that uses the operating engineer's union instead of the longshoremen and the poor idiots are getting pissy about it. of course there is an advantage in it for the port, but i'm sure they aren't making any killing. that the longshoremen have priced themselves out of the job is entirely the fault of the union bosses who demanded a bit too much in hard times. they thought they had a lock on the port and now find they aren't the only game in town.Willyßagseed;6246244 said:
i'll let you respond to you.
can i ask you something? are hardcore, right-wing christians against abortions but for having sex with mules?
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/06/bizarre_sex_habits_of_the_extreme_rightwing.php