Reply #12: my brother works for Delphi

[Batgirl]

he's made a good living for more than 15 years as a skilled tradesman. This brother is smart and hardworking and has saved the company millions of dollars by submitting many "suggestions" --specificying ways to improve manufacturing efficiency, ideas that were subsequently adopted by the company.

He's also a little bit fundie, a little bit wingnutty, and voted for Bush.

He can go on chapter and verse about how the company shipped the manufacuring of it's most popular, best selling products, overseas. Then blamed the domestic workers for not bringing in enough revenue with their output of products that have lackluster sales.

He can go on chapter and verse about built-in waste and chicken shit managers who are much more concerned with manipulating facts so that on paper their little corner of the Delphi universe looks good, even while undergoing practices that cost the company more money.

Now he's looking at a $500/week paycut. An amount of money that will push him out of the middle class. How bitter do you think he is?

Yet he and too many of his co-workers voted for the same Repuke mentality that is the source of a large part of what's going on. And by the way, if the Democrats can't figure out how to speak to the concerns of these voters, they're beyond pitiful.

One of the saddest aspects in all of this is the number of people who are working for Wal-mart wages, who, upon hearing that these autoworkers are about to be brought down to their level, are actually glad. Unfortunately they feel misplaced resentment towards what they view as spoiled, overpaid shoprats who are finally and deservedly going to be poor like them.

So we have people at the very top, and too many near the bottom, who can't think far enough ahead to envision what this country is going to be like when there's no one left to spend on anything more than bare subsistence. They don't realize what the end result will be -- and that Flint, MI was like the canary in the coalmine to show what the whole nation is going to look like when the middle class disappears.