Originally posted by Dowding
My heart bleeds, miko2d. Those towns would only be experiencing a situation replicated over the entire developed world. You're nothing special.
But we are! Or rather they are. Those guys "over the entire world" do not vote in USA while people in those towns do. They do not care if your heart bleeds, they care what our president and congress do.
Many americans, myself included, do not support that decision. I expect that your governments will start retaliating.
Apparantly Bush is too compasionate to the american working man? No. He is just too pragmatic. Those union workers were getting extra benefuts by making US steel industry less competitive through resisting modernisation, promoting ineficiency and driving up costs. The fall was predictable and now they want the government to bail them out at the expence of other US workers who will suffer from the trade war, higher steel prices, etc. Laws of economics dictate that increased reward comes with increased risk. If I do not save my own money and hurt my company, I run an increased risk that my pension plan (actually I do not have any) may fold.
If republicans do that kind of stuff, I might as well be voting for democrats.
Of course sometimes it is impossible to compete against low paid or slave labor with no environmental costs or government subcidies. Tariffs are a good idea in that case but they would have to be directed against specific countries, not general.
miko
