The layoffs at GM really break my heart. The beginning of this story really nails it. It’s not the final nail in the coffin, but clearly nearly 100 years of progressive reform in this country is coming to naught. This really is the end of the blue collar middle class.
An online friend, someone who I respect quite a bit suggested that this is the sort of thing that should start a populist revolt in the rust belt. I don’t think it will. In fact, I think we’re more than 20 years past the point where the industrial working class had any hope of saving themselves. 1984 was where we could have stopped it. Don’t give Reagan a second term after he helped gut the U.S. auto industry, steel industry, and helped corporations bash unions all over the country. Instead, half the people he was kicking in the face admired his “tough guy” image so much that they tried to kiss his boots while they were down there. The larger working class as a whole won’t revolt because they don’t vote, can’t vote, or are so convinced that the Democrats are gonna hand the U.S. over to the Soviets, er, excuse me, Al Quaeda or that we might let gays live like human beings that they’ll put up with whatever the Red State nation wants.
The only way to save the simple, but secure and somewhat comfortable lifestyle that the working class and progressives spent 100 years try to create is to thoroughly restructure our trade relations. They need to move every bit as far in a “protectionist” mode as they’ve moved into a free trade mode over recent decades. We need to pull out of NAFTA and GATT. We need to erect high tariffs against anyone who isn’t paying their workers a living wage, etc and even then we need much higher tariffs on everyone else than we currently have against anyone. Let the Japanese, Germans, Koreans, or whoever sell as many cars in the U.S. as they want, so long as they build them here with UAW labor. Let the same go for GM, Daimler-Chrysler, and Ford: make it so that cars made in Mexico either provide a living wage with safe conditions or the tariffs will kill them when they bring them back over the border. Apply this model to steel, consumer electronics, etc, and you’ll have a much more prosperous nation with much better distribution of wealth.
It’s a damn shame that the only somewhat major figure in American politics talking about this stuff is Pat Buchanan. I don’t wanna have to send the women to the kitchen and the Jews to Israel to get this done.
