Corporations and their media apologists are blaming us for falling for their consumerist tricks.
Blame the Victims
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
12 Comments. Leave new
For sure, Detroit is on its knees, and lobbying DC to get the rest of the country to bail it out, because of weak unions.
Incitatus,
Do you actually believe Milton Friedman? You had better move on, because american conservatism, like american liberalism, has become absurd. That is part of the reason you are getting co opted my Bushes and Reagans.
1)Detroit has been making and selling pure shit for 40 years. Foreign cars have always been superior. Nothing new here.
2)Wages have been growing at a slower rate than durable goods for 40 years.
3)Less americans can afford to buy new cars because they do not get paid enough.
They are not working any less hard than they were in the 50s and 60s, they just can't afford to buy anything without credit.
Seems like everyone wants to blame *one* group. Some people blame just the investment bankers, or just the media, or just the unions, or just the consumers, etc. In fact, it was a widespread, complex failure. If you have to point your finger at just one person though, that person is Alan Greenspan. Next up is Bush, for forcing lenders (in the holy name of diversity) to push subprimes from something like 2 percent to 20 percent of the mortgage market.
Yes, in my area of Michigan, many are convinced union greed is the problem. They criticize a U.A.W. janitor that makes $90k a year after 30 yrs. Yet don't ask how many hours were worked for the money. Then suggest a C.E.O. should make five or six times that after 5yrs on the job.
I don't believe any of the financial and economic mess the USA is in right now has anything to do with George W. Bush. We could just as well have had Pat Robertson guiding our space shuttles to orbit instead of all that smoke and mirrors science stuff. Why, Pat Robertson could have kicked the space shuttles into orbit with his powerful legs, PRAISE THE LORD! Send them fancy, bespectacled egghead scientists and engineers back to their liberal university professorships, CAN I GET A WITNESS?!! As a future ex-President, George W. Bush will prove what a great leader he has been and still is. Just you naysayers wait and see! 9-11! 9-11! 9-11!
Well what I find interesting or should I say NOT SURPRISING AT ALL is that they are blaming the unions. They say it leads to less competitiveness.
Well a union worker at the big 3 ears $28 an hour and a non-union worker at lets say Toyota earns $25. Big fricking woop.
Did you guys see Gideon Gono (the head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) complimenting the US and UK on our recent alignment with their fiscal policy? He couldn't resist rubbing it in that the Zim plan (or "bailout" in American English) had been so soundly mocked by both governments for years. Finally something we can all agree on.
The three economies, it's apples and oranges, I know. At least they're not all run by bumbling kleptocrats whose actions are dictated more by personal interest than by a sense of public or moral duty.
J/K you're fucked. buy some goats
Onetwothree has a good point. One could argue there is blame at many levels, however where does the buck ultimately stop? It stops with those who have the power and authority to influence policy at the highest level of each institution: Government, market, and civil society. At the point when things are going well, these people pad themselves with prestige and money and shamelessly justify their wholesale theft and greed on the merits that they are the reason things are going well.
When things crash, they insist it's always someone else. It starts with leadership, they are in those positions of authority because they (supposedly) have the responsibility and accountability to get things right. Then when it turns out they didn't get things right, they use their bully pulpit to divert attention to something else.
It starts and ends with those in power. The rest of us are simply making choices in a world that is not of our choosing. We're dealing with the fall out of a 28 year orgy of greed. Clinton didn't even pretend to change its course.
From the forest itself, comes the handle for the axe.
Our economy has been as if there was a big dam and someone punched a hole in it to run a small paddlewheel generator off the stream of water. For every part of energy gained by this, the real generator lost 9 parts of potential energy it could use more efficiently.
That is what all the eroding of trade barriers, tariffs, labor groups, wages, increasing debt have been. Not even so much as 'class warfare' but outright theft by people who can simply never, ever have enough.
There's an archaic English word for it: "Barathrum" It means an insatiable glutton or a blackmailer who can never be satisfied.
Very sharp comic, Ted!
The theme hearkens back to your [/our] bad old days at "Processed World"… I haven't seen much "Processed"-style analysis of the current meltdown to date. What a pity that ol' mag isn't still alive to offer commentary on the current situation.
Hey Anonymous above me, too bad that word is "archaic"… how did that word fall out of favor when the idea behind it has obviously never gone away??
Angelo, you are correct on number 1, but number 2 and 3 might apply to convenience store clerks and Wal-Mart employees, but not to the auto industry workforce.
Friedman, schmiedman. The pendulum will swing now from Friedman to Keynes, from statism writ small to statism writ large. Five years from now, the Keynesian medicine won't save the USA from being deep into a recesssion. I will make for amusing debate between the pundits, though.
2 and 3 might apply to convenience store clerks and Wal-Mart employees, but not to the auto industry workforce.
Actually, you might have heard, no one is buying new cars right now. Even personal debt is shrinking cause no one is even asking their banks to buy stuff for them. No. This is not just walmart employees, comrade.
And how dare you throw Friedman under the bus after ripping off his ponzi scheme motif.