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I work in a city that was populated primarily by people from Appalachia and the Deep South who came up to work in the bomber plants in WWII, then in the auto plants -- as was the adjacent township. Nearly every obituary for people in this area who are over 65 shows that they were born in the south and came north for better jobs; they left the coal mines, cotton fields, and hardscrabble farms for a better life. They all note that the deceased retired from one of the auto companies after many years and most also mention a second home, or a hobby the person pursued in retirement. And many, many of the person's children are doctors, or teachers, or lawyers. They were probably the first in their families to go to college; made possible by their parents carving out good, solid, working middle class lives for them. That, in my opinion, is the American Dream and that is why I will not buy a car that was not manufactured by union labor. Union labor turned Michigan into an attractive place to live and work and is responsible for the comfortable living so many of us enjoy. Asian cars may be manufactured in the US but their employees are not union, the companies actively work to bust union organizing, the profits go overseas, and their markets are closed to our auto plants. They're destroying the working middle class and it's wrong.
Read Thom Hartmann's book, Screwed. Very interesting and informative.
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