Reply #11: No one is asking for your pity [View All]

[Batgirl]

It's unbelievable to me to read your complaint that you can't afford to buy a new car because of those shoprats making the big money for "putting a bolt in a car." While you "hold lives literally in your hand." You actually comment approvingly that a U.S. automaker is outsourcing their manufacturing to countries that have cheap labor.

I grew up in a Michigan factory town and still reside there. My family tree is thick with shoprats. My dad's shoprat paycheck bought me a college education. Unlike you, I don't think that entitles me to feelings of superiority, much less martrydom.

I'm old enough to have witnessed firsthand what happens to a community when a substantial percentage of those middle class wages go away. All sorts of other business are destroyed as a consequence of no longer having enough customers with disposable income.

This latest news isn't at all about your apparent resentment over the perception that unionized factory workers make more money than you. It's also about much more than the fact that 10s of thouands of Ford auto workers that are about to lose their jobs. It's about the vanishing middle class and all the other businesses that are going to close and all the other incomes that are going to shrink.

Your comments make it sound like you'd prefer these factory workers to have jobs at Walmart making $6/hr. because that would be more in line with how you view their contribution to society in comparison to your own. I can only think about what has happened in Flint over the past 30 years, what is currently happening to the state of Michigan, and think this is a classic case of "be careful what you wish for."