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Who, or What, Killed Detroit? Union Greed
Investors Business Daily ^ | 03/24/2011

Posted on 03/24/2011 7:08:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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1 posted on 03/24/2011 7:08:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Let’s Consider the dollars and cents folks and it really adds up:

* Total pay and benefits for a full-time worker for the Big Three until recently averaged about $140,000 a year.

* The Foreign transplants? Just $80,000.

* Add in an estimated $2,000-plus per car for retiree health care and pensions for the Big Three, and the cost gap is huge.

* Two years ago, the Center for Automotive Research estimated that for every job created by a foreign transplant, 6.1 jobs were lost by the Big Three - many of them in Detroit.


2 posted on 03/24/2011 7:10:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

And, based on their successes in the Motor City, the UAW plans to spend millions on organizing Honda, BMW and Nissan plants in the US.
Good luck with that, boys...


3 posted on 03/24/2011 7:10:58 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Go Hawks !)
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To: SeekAndFind

Beautiful Detroit! City of Vision! A Model for America's Future!

4 posted on 03/24/2011 7:11:37 AM PDT by ScottinVA (Imagine.... a world without islam.)
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To: ScottinVA

Seen on a recent Detroit Parade of Homes tour...

Business thrives in bustling Detroit!

5 posted on 03/24/2011 7:17:55 AM PDT by ScottinVA (Imagine.... a world without islam.)
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To: SeekAndFind

“Let’s Consider the dollars and cents folks and it really adds up:”

Yep, I read somewhere recently, that upon graduation over 50% of Michigan and Michigan State grad’s leave the state for greener pastures. Receiving states should thank Michigan tax payers for these highly educated free assets. Poor, poor, pitiful Michigan....


6 posted on 03/24/2011 7:19:34 AM PDT by snoringbear (Government is the Pimp,)
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To: ScottinVA
A Model for America's Future!

If Obama gets reelected you probably aren't too far off.

7 posted on 03/24/2011 7:19:34 AM PDT by hattend (Obama got his 3am call about Egypt. The call went right to the answering machine.- Sarah Palin)
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To: ScottinVA

That’s a scene from Robocop, right?


8 posted on 03/24/2011 7:23:21 AM PDT by swain_forkbeard (Rationality may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.)
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To: ScottinVA
Many years ago, here in FR, someone posted a beautiful thread about Detroit.

Pictures of before (if available) and after ... of noted buildings, i.e. ; hotels, large office buildings, mansions and etc.

I grew up in Boston, so I have a taste of older archetecture and it was easy to imagine myself in those Detroit heydays.

I now live in the Pittsburgh area, and though I was not conditioned to the steel industry, I have worked in older factory types ... and to see the decay of steel mills along the river ... the broken and crumbling parking lots designed to hold .. I don't know .. a thousand or so ?, cars ....

America has been under attack by 'modernity' ever since the glass and steel archetects came of age.

I don't know ... maybe I'm just old.

9 posted on 03/24/2011 7:23:53 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true.)
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To: SeekAndFind

For both management and labor, it was the love of money.


10 posted on 03/24/2011 7:24:56 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: knarf

Google “the fabulous ruins of Detroit” to revisit that site. It will make you cry all over again.


11 posted on 03/24/2011 7:27:54 AM PDT by doodad
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To: SeekAndFind

Liberals killed Detroit along with the UAW.

Liberals have controlled Detroit since 1961.


12 posted on 03/24/2011 7:28:40 AM PDT by crz
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To: swain_forkbeard

Not Robocop, I think it’s more like “Escape from New York”


13 posted on 03/24/2011 7:30:04 AM PDT by 101voodoo
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To: ScottinVA
The first computer company that I worked for was Burroughs Corporation during the mid to late 60s.

Burroughs was located in Detroit, it's factory workers were union and after the martin king riots in Detroit, the company started down hill and never recovered.

As a point of reference as to how the industry has changed over time, in '68 Burroughs sold the first 4 function {add, subtract, multiply, divide} electronic calculator, manufactured by Sharp, and it sold for $1,400.

Today that calculator is considered a give away and those functions are free on cell phones.

Regardless of products or markets, union greed can kill individual companies and even drive entire industries out of the country.

Capital will flow to the most friendly environment.

14 posted on 03/24/2011 7:33:07 AM PDT by USS Alaska (Nuke the terrorist savages.)
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To: SeekAndFind
In 2008 three liberals on the Michigan Supreme Court, and one ex-Republican whacko, Elizabeth Weaver, went on a rampage and ran a decade of jurisprudence through the shredder.

Obligations of contract no longer mean anything, and judges are free to interpret and enforce (or not) contracts as they see fit. Scalia's famed opinion in the Lujan decision on standing to bring suit, adopted almost immediately by most states in the US, no longer applies in Michigan. Anyone can sue anyone for anything. Feel bad because your neighbor's kid got treated badly at school. You can sue for damages in a "representational" capacity.

the present term is supposed to fix that, with a new Republican majority, but we have learned that Republicans are just as often RINOs as conservatives. CJ Young is very good, but one newly elected member, Mary Beth Kelly, is not turning out to be a reliable conservitive. Newly appointed Brian Zahra has a fabulous reputation as a "rule of law" judge, but he went very wobbly trying to figure out which way the political winds were blowing.

Michigan is not a state anyone wants to be doing business right now.

15 posted on 03/24/2011 7:33:20 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: All

I dont know how many of you have been there? But, it is the most shocking and amazing experience you’d ever have.
Some streets way out are actually fields and woodlands. You cant even tell that it was house to house neighborhoods anymore. I know, because I know people who lived there and took me to where they used to live when they were kids.

And it continues to creep out into the urban areas.


16 posted on 03/24/2011 7:33:56 AM PDT by crz
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To: swain_forkbeard

Not Robocop, I think it’s more like “Escape from New York”


17 posted on 03/24/2011 7:34:15 AM PDT by 101voodoo
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To: SeekAndFind

Not only did they price the big three out of the market, they priced American industry out of America. Now, everything is not only made overseas, but we’ve lost touch with the technologies.

Not only do we not make our light bulbs but our citizens don’t have the intelligence to screw them in. Otherwise, we would have never permitted the unions to take over this country and would have never elected this idiot to the presidency.


18 posted on 03/24/2011 7:35:33 AM PDT by arrdon (Never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter.)
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To: snoringbear
Yep, I read somewhere recently, that upon graduation over 50% of Michigan and Michigan State grad’s leave the state for greener pastures

One of my predictions for the future is that the State University is going to go the way of the Dodo Bird, because it will get harder to justify spending the money on students who most likely won't stay in the state after graduation.

19 posted on 03/24/2011 7:38:53 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: SeekAndFind

Democrats.


20 posted on 03/24/2011 7:44:28 AM PDT by monocle
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