I’ve received many letters concerning my previous editorial (November 20, 2008) about Unions and the Something-For-Nothing Bunch.
As the debate for MORE taxpayers’ money heats up with even greater demands from the moochers, a thought occurred to me when I read a comment from the CAW (Canadian Auto Workers Union).
Basically, it said that the Union had made enough concessions. End of story.
Were they kidding? What will they do if they don’t get their way? Will they work to rule and teach management a lesson? Management’s broke. What lesson can they possibly teach?
There is so much blame for this economic mess that it seems as though it is an impossible task to point an accusatory finger in just a few directions.
To the contrary, finding who to blame is as simple as opening our eyes and looking in the mirror. IT IS US! We are the ones to blame for this mess.
We elect and reelect politicians who spend our money like drunken sailors on shore leave. MOST Voters give their support to politicians who promise the sun and the moon.
What they never think of is whose money is going to be used to pay for the FREEBIE promises. But since most people are too STUPID to know that governments have no money, they couldn’t get it through their thick heads that the money governments promise to spend is OUR money.
And now that it has really hit the fan, what do the STUPID people want from their government? MORE PROMISES TO SPEND MORE MONEY!
Why shouldn’t the Banks, Investment Houses, Brokerage Firms, Auto Industry, House Builders, Airlines and all other poorly managed industries have their hands out with big expectations, since that’s the way it has always been, and that’s what the taxpayers have always accepted?
No one seems to be learning anything from this disaster, least of all the taxpayers.
We’ve allowed our governments to grow to the point where just the cost of their maintenance is crushing our economy. We’ve allowed our bureaucracy to become such an entwined mess that it has grown to be utterly dysfunctional, to the point that it is counter-productive.
I have a friend who was until recently the Chief Underwriter for one of Canada’s premium Insurance Companies. I have another friend who is a senior regional manager for a different major Insurance Company.
Both companies compete with each other for the same clientele with similar ‘products’. I emphasize the word ‘products’ because that’s what they sell. For years now, it hasn’t been just life insurance, Whole or Term. It has been ‘products’.
So what’s a ‘product’?
As hard as the two of them tried to explain their ‘products’ to me, the more I didn’t understand.
The gist of what I got from their explanations had to do with how their respective companies would invest my money in bits and pieces in different packages including Commercial Paper, Overnight Funds, Derivatives etcetera.
I’m not stupid, and I am able to understand most of what I’m told, even complicated concepts. But, in listening to these explanations of investment ‘products’, I sort of felt stupid because I couldn’t get beyond the idea of “give us your money”.
As it turns out, I am not stupid, or at least not as stupid as I thought I might have been for not understanding, since the entire Financial House of Cards that has been INVENTED by the financial industries was as I had suspected nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
As a Conservative, I do believe in a Free Market System where the government plays a very small but extremely important function. This function is to regulate. To set the rules everyone must follow, much like the rules established to regulate sporting competitions.
Without rules, a game is nothing more than a free-for-all. But with too many rules, you can’t play the game. The trick is to establish a system where uncomplicated rules keep everyone honest.
In this respect, our governments have failed us miserably.
Instead of establishing fundamental rules to govern our critical financial institutions, our governments ignored them, or complicated the rules to the extent that they became self-contradictory and ungovernable.
Our major businesses have done the same thing in as much as they deserted the core principles of Business 101.
1 – You cannot spend more than you earn.
2 – You cannot price yourself out of the market.
3 – You cannot stand pat on product development.
4 – You cannot reward management for doing a bad job.
5 – You cannot have stock shares worth more than the real value of the company.
And most of all – You cannot allow public companies to be managed by people who earn bonuses based upon gross revenue opposed to net profits.
If one of my sales agents made a million dollar sale on a service that costs me $1.1 million, how much should I reward him or her for losing $100,000?
That’s what’s been happening in a nutshell.
BACK TO THE AUTO INDUSTRY and the line the Union has drawn in the sand about no further worker concessions.
When Ronald became President of the USA (1980), the striking Air Traffic Controllers Union decided to test his resolve about his Presidential back to work order.
They said no. He gave then a deadline to get back to work, or every last one of them who did not report for work for whatever reason would be fired.
They said OH YEAH – TRY IT.
For their troubles every last one of them who didn’t show up for work was fired. Not only were they fired; they were not rehired even at a starting salary. Needless to say, no union in America ever screwed with Ronald Reagan again.
Reagan inherited a broken, dispirited and bankrupted United States of America from Jimmy Carter, so far America’s worst President in modern time. I say so far because I believe Barack Obama has it in him to be even worse than Carter. But I digress.
Reagan slashed taxes, reduced the size of government, and cut away much of the bureaucratic crap. The result was extraordinary. Virtually overnight, America blossomed and carried the entire world with her.
It wasn’t any more complicated than that.
If the unions don’t like it TOUGH! Let The Big Three Automakers go bankrupt and start from scratch like the rest of us have to when things don’t work out. Then they’ll work out. It’s simply Business 101.
Best Regards . . . Howard Galganov
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One Comment
I agree with you on the point that Mulroney was arrogant as Prime Minister, but I disagree that he might have been a great prime minister, but for his arrogance. He tried to sell off Canada to Quebec with his and his government’ s attempt to force the Meech Lake accord down the rest of Canada’s throat. Had it not been for the strong, courageous and staunch opposition of Newfoundland’s premier of the day Clyde Wells and Elijah Harper’s opposition to this travesty called the Meech Lake accord.
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