Another GOP clown runs

[Mr.wizard]

That's bullshit about unions damaging auto and steel. Unions are the reason that America's middle class grew at the rate it did and gave consumers the buying power that made those industries grow into what they where. Those industries along with the rest of the manufacturing sector fell victim to outsourcing and globalization.

You're right that unions were instrumental in the growth of the American middle class, but by the mid 70s they were striking to obtain wages equivalent to college-educated professionals, and cushy pensions, just for standing on an assembly line and performing simple repetitive tasks.  At the same time they were making crappy cars while the Japanese were making better quality cars at lower prices.  The same with the steel industry.  To this day, these industries are still struggling to finance the pensions obtained by the unions back then.  I worked in a steel mill the summer before I started college and, though I did some some hard work, I also spent spent more than a few workdays trying to look busy because I was assigned to some "do nothing" position that wasn't needed, but was required by the labor contract.  The fact is that the big unions had gotten out of control.  The pendulum had swung too far.

Really? You think these giant industries completely collapsed because the workers demanded too much money? That is completely idiotic, globalization killed those industries, plain and simple. We couldn't compete with the countries we where importing from, these countries had undervalued currencies, no health care for workers, and they paid their workers slave wages. Unions were not out of control, what happened was we tried to import cheaper goods to make bigger profits and we put our manufacturing sector out business and a lot of middle class people out of work.