WJ Charliee (@WJCharliee)

#UAW #Strike shows #Big3 #Automakers {Part II of II} https://nypost.com/2023/10/07/uaw-strike-shows-ford-gm-stellantis-have-hit-the-scrapyard/ If politicians really cared about the overall prosperity of the #American #People, then they would pay attention to the interests of the #firms that actually create the #wealth and the #jobs rather than declaring #war on highly #productive #companies such as #Apple and #Alphabet. Instead of doing the smart thing, the #people in #Washington act as though we were still in the #Eisenhower years, turning wrenches. #Joe (the #Dirty #Rat #Bastard) #Biden is an #economically #ignorant #sentimentalist who likes to say that “unions built the #middle #class,” but that is, as a matter of fact, not true: There never has been a time in #American #History when the majority of 3workers were unionized, and the #artificially #high #wages and #generous #benefits of union jobs are paid for with reduced wages and benefits for workers #elsewhere in the #economy. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: #Unions are monopolies — they enjoy a #legal #privilege from the government to be the sole #provider of #labor in a particular market — and they display precisely those #economic #pathologies associated with other monopolies, i.e., they harm consumers by charging #prices above the #competitive #market #rate. Nobody likes doing business with a #monopoly. So, in the long run, #production #shifts to areas where the monopoly can’t reach (as in #offshoring #manufacturing #work) or to places where the monopoly’s effects are reduced (as in the shift to #right-#to-#work #states). Again, this is all predictable: In 1950, Detroit had 1.9 million people and almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs; today, Detroit has 632,464 people and about 23,000 manufacturing jobs. Ironically, Detroit has more workers struggling with a lack of access to an #automobile than it has workers making #automobiles. If unions are building the middle class, they aren’t doing it in Detroit. On the other hand, #Apple paid about as much in #corporate #taxes in 2022 as #General #Motors made in #total #profit that year. There is a reason #Toyota thrives in #Texas, while #General #Motors had to be propped up with #government #bailouts. You can only evade market realities for so long. UAW’s business model does not have a future. The big remaining question is whether they will take what’s left of the “Big 3” down with them." {SOURCE: Kevin D. Williamson is a national correspondent for The Dispatch.}