USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:


USENET READER wrote:

I am starting a DYI home-improvement project and I notice
that few power or hand tools are made in the USA. Even
most of the Craftsman brand tools are made in the USA.
Some are made in Taiwan (a democracy I have no problem
doing business with) and Red China (perhaps I should call
them Fascist China, a country where the factories are owned
by the state and staffed with slave labor).







Are you stuck in the '80s? Most Chinese companies have been
privatized.






And who owns these private companies? Mostly it is
well-connected members of the ChiCom party - so for all
intents and purposes, it is still owned by those who run the
government.






Still stuck in the '80s. The ownership has been changing for
quite a while now, but I would not have expected you to be
informed enough to know this.






No actually - your head is up your ass. Can you tell me who
owns the private companies if not the party elite? They just
privatized these factories and now they split the profits not
with the workers, but with their American investors. So you
tell me how while it has changed in shape, the end result isn't
really different?






Seems it's your head up your own ass. China's got a thriving
stock market and ownership is shifting to individuals. I
wouldn't have expected you to know this, it bursts your bubble
of ignorance.






Bullshit - you can say that there is a stockmarket and that is
supposed to mean that your average rank and file Chinese citizen
can own stock? that is such bullshit - that whole thing is set up
to attract foreign investment capital and to also make it easier
to reward the party bigwigs. Their system is more fascist than
free-market capitalism. They could still take it all back and
leave their overseas investors hanging - what you gonna do when
they do that? Sue them?






You've just proven you do not know what the hell you are talking
about. The average citizen DOES OWN STOCK. Give up, you
obviously are clueless about this subject.






The average citizen in China doesn't own stock. Do you know what
the per capita or average income level is in China? There are like
1.5 billion people over there. Can you show a cite where you an
prove that the average chinese citizen owns stock??





You don't know what the **** you are talking about, why don't you
just shut up idiot. I know many average chinese citizens. They own
stock. The ability of the average Chinese person to live cheap and
save would put most Americans to shame.




You know these citizens from where? You go over to China?



I know them from China, twit. You're an idiot who writes before
reading. I did go over to China, more times than I can remember. I
lived there for several years. I have friends from many different
income levels and from many different places including cities and the
country side. You obviously know nothing about China other than a few
things you read in the paper. As you've now shown, even your reading
skills are limited. I'm done talking to you. Go troll somehwere else.


You went over to China more times than you can remember? Where did you
lve in China? If the Red Chinese let you over there, they didn't let
you run all over the country and see all the poverty and the people who
had no democratic freedom.

Keep going, you're showing more of your ignorance.

If they can buy stocks, they can only buy
the stocks the commie *******s want them to buy.

Sure, whatever you say.


You make Red China sound like a bastion of freedom, democracy and
capitalism. Maybe you should talk to some Tibetans - they just love the
Red Chinese. Maybe you should just go the **** back there and live - r
starve. I don't care - either way you are a ****ing moron who can't
make a logical argument and can't cite any facts to back up your claim.

I've backed up my claims, I have personal knowledge of the subject. You
only have a few distorted newspaper articles and an obvious predjudice
that has prevented you from learning much about what has happened in
China over the last 20 years. Get your head out of the paper. Go
experience life and then report back in a few years. Ni bu zhe dao
Zhonggua. Ni tai ben. Ni zui zui ben. Zaijian shagua. And no, I did
not need any help to write that. Go figure it out troll.

God, what bellyaching! *Cheap* power tools now are better than the
*expensive* power tools of a generation ago - and anyone can easily
enough
order power tools at whatever quality level he chooses to afford. And
why
would someone want to spend a bunch more for a tool like a drill that
will
last 10 years, when in five years the newer drills will probably be
vastly
improved and he'll want one of those anyway?

Disregarding the quality aspect, what improvements have there been in
drills, saws, and sanders in the past 5 years?

Jim

"USENET READER" wrote in message
nk.net...


Neill wrote:
"USENET READER" wrote in message
ink.net...

You don't know what the **** you are talking about, why don't you just
shut up idiot. I know many average chinese citizens. They own stock.
The ability of the average Chinese person to live cheap and save would
put most Americans to shame.

You know these citizens from where? You go over to China? What is the
per capita income in China? You are so ****ing full of shit- it's not
like they make American wages and live in poverty by choice.


A repressed demofag, aren't you a joy!

Talking about personal attacks? You don't have any information or cites
to back up your claims, so you call someone a fag. What kind of a
fart-shiffing, crypto-fascists Bush lover are you?

China is getting rich on the imbalance of trade with the USA and from US
investments, not from slave-labor chinese workers buying stock. The
imbalance of trade ends up enriching the ChiCom officials and their US
Investors, and they end up owning more and more of US debt - they really
can't do anything else with all that money!

Doucheboy - why don't you come up with some numbers to prove your point
- what percentage of Chinese workers own stock, what is the per capita
income of those workers, and what percentage of their income do they
invest in the Chinese stock market? Or do you mean Chinese people
living and investing in the US market?


Personal attacks a point don't make.

Dickhead.



And do I want to live in ****ing squallor in the US just to make you
feel happy and superior - and to make some rich puke even richer?


I doubt you live in squalor, fag boy.




Sorry dingleberry - my famly came from Italy and Slovakia, and those
days of anyone from my family dancing on the end of a string for the Man
while living on some feudal manor and owing my soul to the Company
Store are ****ing over - you hear me? You and the rest of you rich
cocksuckers had better realize that your $7.00 rent a cops aren't gonna
protect you from the masses when we get ****ed and rise up to come after
you behind the walls of your gated community. And if you don't live
behind those gates - why the **** are you standing up for those rich
pukes anyway?


No, but say hello to my Colt .45


According to the news sources I have, even though the companies are
being privatized, the new owners are still the party elite and their
overseas business partners. Employee or other non-management stock
ownership is being held to 20% or less. So how the **** can you say
that the average Chinese citizen owns stock? Prove it - show me a

cite!


Because I have many friends in China. I've done better than read a few
news articles, I've lived there.

Right - did you move to china before or after your cousin pulled the
wrench out of the door of his car? What city and province did you live
in and why were you there in the first place. Because where you lived -
if you did live there - certainly colored your perspective of what is an
average Chinese person. If you lived in a big city, you might have been
living with a shitload of Chinese people, but they were far from average
- they were the top of the economic pile in China.


What's with the class division, fag boy? Are you not only repressed, but
poor, too. Damn, that's what you get for believing the communist lies
your
faggot friends were telling you. Be careful, they only want to **** you
in
the ass, but then, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know,
eh,
fag boy?

When asked for a cite, all you can do is cal me a fag - that means you
don't have a ****ing clue.

I on the other hand can show cites that Chinese labor doesn't own stock
and that companies like Wal Mart actually hurt American workers more than
they help them:


From http://cecd.aers.psu.edu/pubs/PovertyResearchWM.pdf

Wal-Mart and County-Wide Poverty
October 18, 2004
AERS STAFF PAPER No. 371

Conclusion
After carefully and comprehensively accounting for other local
determinants of poverty, we find that the presence of Wal-Mart
unequivocally raised family poverty rates in US counties
during the 1990s relative to places that had no such stores. This was true
not only as a consequence of existing stores in a county in 1987, but it
was also an independent outcome of the location of new stores between 1987
and 1998. The question whether the cost of relatively
higher poverty in a county is offset by the benefits of lower prices and
wider choices available to consumers associated with a Wal-Mart store
cannot be answered here.

However, if Wal-Mart does contribute to a higher poverty rate, then it is
not bearing the full economic and social costs of its business practices.
Instead, Wal-Mart transfers income from the working poor and from
taxpayers though welfare-programs directed at the poor to
stockholders and the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune, as well as to
consumers. These transfers are in addition to the public infrastructure
subsidies often provided by local communities. Regardless of the
distributional effects, the Wal-Mart business model appears to extract
cumulative rents that exceed those earned by owners of other corporations,
including Microsoft.

From http://edworkforce.house.gov/democra...MARTREPORT.pdf

EVERYDAY LOW WAGES:
THE HIDDEN PRICE WE ALL PAY FOR WAL-MART
A REPORT BY THE DEMOCRATIC STAFF OF THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE MILLER (D-CA), SENIOR DEMOCRAT
FEBRUARY 16, 2004

Wal-Mart maintains an extensive global network of 10,000 suppliers.74
Whether American, Bangladeshi, Chinese, or Honduran, Wal-Mart plays these
producers against one another in search of lower and lower prices.
American suppliers have been forced to relocate their businesses overseas
to maintain Wal-Mart contracts.75 Overseas manufacturers are forced to
engage in cutthroat competition that further erodes wages and working
conditions of what often already are sweatshops. To keep up with the
pressure to produce ever cheaper goods, factories force employees to work
overtime or work for weeks without a day off. A Bangladeshi factory worker
told the Los Angeles Times that employees at her factory worked from 8
a.m. to 3 a.m. for 10 and 15 day stretches just to meet Wal-Mart price
demands. And still, Wal-Mart’sgeneral manager for Bangladesh complained of
his country’s factories, telling the Los Angeles Times, “I think they need
to improve. When I entered a factory in China, it seemed they are very
fast.”76

While low-wage jobs displace higher-paid manufacturing jobs in the United
States, undercutting living standards at home, living standards abroad are
not reaping the benefits one might expect. Reports indicate that Wal-Mart’s
bargaining power is able to maintain low wages and poor working conditions
among its foreign suppliers. The Washington Post has explained: “As
capital scours the globe for cheaper and more malleable workers, and as
poor countries seek multinational companies to provide jobs, lift
production, and open export markets, Wal-Mart and China have forged
themselves into the ultimate joint venture, their symbiosis influencing
the terms of labor and consumption the world over.”77 Thanks to a ban on
independent trade unions and a lack of other basic human rights, China
offers Wal-Mart a highly-disciplined and cheap workforce. A Chinese labor
official who asked to remain anonymous for fear of punishment told the
Washington Post that “Wal-Mart pressures the factory to cut its price, and
the factory responds with longer hours or lower pay. And the workers have
no options.”78

One employee of a Chinese supplier described the difficulties of surviving
on $75 per month. She could rarely afford to buy meat, and her family
largely subsisted on vegetables. Over four years, she had not received a
single salary increase.79

Wal-Mart has countered that it insists that its suppliers enforce labor
standards and comply with Chinese law. One-hundred Wal-Mart auditors
inspect Chinese plants, and the company has suspended contracts with about
400 suppliers, mainly for violating overtime limits. An additional 72
factories were permanently blacklisted in 2003 for violating child labor
standards. Still, critics point out that the Wal-Mart does not regularly
inspect smaller factories that use middlemen to sell to the company. Nor
does it inspect the factories of subcontractors. A Chinese labor organizer
explained that the inspections are “ineffective,” since Wal-Mart usually
notifies the factories in advance. The factories “often prepare by
cleaning up, creating fake time sheets and briefing workers on what to
say.”80

The factories themselves complain that, because Wal-Mart demands such low
prices, they have slim profit margins – if any. A manager of one Chinese
supplier told the Washington Post, “In the beginning, we made money … But
when Wal-Mart started to launch nationwide distribution, they pressured us
for a special price below our cost. Now, we’re losing money on every box,
while Wal-Mart is making more money.”81 Obviously, one way to regain a
profit for such suppliers would be to begin cutting back on labor costs.

Finally, as testament to Wal-Mart’s stalwart anti-union policy, none of
its 31 stores in China are unionized, despite the fact that the Communist
Party-controlled official union has told the company that it would not
help workers fight for higher pay.82 Oddly enough, Article 10 of China’s
Trade Union Law requires that any establishment with 25 or more workers
must have a union. Wal-Mart, however, claims that it has received
assurances from the central government that it need not allow unions in
any of its stores.83 As one reporter has explained, “The explanation for
the apparent contradiction may be that the government’s desire for
foreigninvestment and jobs trumps any concern for workers’ rights. That
wouldn’t be surprising in the Chinese environment, where strikes are
forbidden and the official labor grouping actively supports the government’s
efforts to block the rise of independent unions.”84 With China, any
company in search of pliant and cheap labor has found a perfect mix of
cooperative government officials and workers made submissive through fear.

How the **** can anyone who hasn't had a wage increase in years and can't
afford to put food on the table and works from 8 AM until 3 AM afford to
buy stock? When do they find the time to run down to the stock broker's
office to make their purchase? Or do they do it on line?


Management decides what to build, labor decides whether they will do it
well or not. Some choose to be sloppy.

And who should put quality control on the assembly line to catch that
shit? Management should have but didn't.


Sure, point the finger at everyone but yourself. Ever hear of
accountability? No? I guess not, because you want to blame God for making
you a fag. Instead of taking responsibility for yourself., you want
everyone
else to be responsible for you. Too bad, fag boy!

Again - what an asshole - when given an example of something that you
can't refute, you call me a fag. Clearly the loser in this thread is
you - you can't even make a logical arguent to support your claims and
cannot offer cites in support of your claims.


And MANY, MANY, MANY more DO HAVE A CHOICE, and choose cheap.



Sorry - very very very very very few people actually have a choice on
what to buy these days - they aren't the buyers for the stores and don't
have a say on what goes on the shelves.

Do you think that customers tell Wal-Mart what to put on the shelves to
sell? **** no - Wal-Mart tells vendors what they will buy an item for,
and in fact tells them to move the production over to China in order to
make it cheaper. GE did that too with many of the vendors who supplied
parts for GE consumer products. When a company like Wal-Mart moves close
to one in four of a growing number of products sold in the country, the
customer has damn little to say about where things are made, expecially
when the loss of those jobs forces people to buy cheaper stuff to make
their money last longer. It's a race to the bottom.


Sorry, but, Wal-Mart gives their customers what they want, whether you
like
or not, fag boy! Quit worrying about everybody else, and get a life.



Do people know that when they shop at Wal-Mart, they are shopping
themselves out of jobs?

Quit selling out your birthright and your country you ****ing fascist
asshole - and get ready for the time when we put your ass against the wall
and shoot you with the rest of the pukes. You want a blindfold, or not?
Menthol or regular?

From http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's
relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and
force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the
unemployment line?

Therein lies the basic conundrum of doing business with the world's
largest retailer. By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most
grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its
customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent
decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand.
Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying
spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from
farm field to factory to financial statement.

Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that
never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer
relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every
day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the
companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the
economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of
pickles at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest
possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached.
The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that
don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must
drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart
and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices.
Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors.
To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from
bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close
U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S.
companies direct access to the American market. "One of the things that
limits or slows the growth of imports is the cost of establishing
connections and networks," says Paul Krugman, the Princeton University
economist. "Wal-Mart is so big and so centralized that it can all at once
hook Chinese and other suppliers into its digital system. So--wham!--you
have a large switch to overseas sourcing in a period quicker than under
the old rules of retailing."

Steve Dobbins has been bearing the brunt of that switch. He's president
and CEO of Carolina Mills, a 75-year-old North Carolina company that
supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel makers--half of
which supply Wal-Mart. Carolina Mills grew steadily until 2000. But in the
past three years, as its customers have gone either overseas or out of
business, it has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees
to 1,200. Dobbins's customers have begun to face imported clothing sold so
cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete even if they paid their
workers nothing.

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply?
How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held
inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you
can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out
of jobs."



I'm a ****ing Wal-Mart stockholder! I am cleaning up while you pout about
your steward job that went down the drain.

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 20:14:32 GMT, USENET READER
wrote:

Tom Disque wrote:

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:08:57 GMT, USENET READER
wrote:



Tom Disque wrote:


On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 02:06:01 GMT, USENET READER
wrote:



Oscar_Lives wrote:

[snip]



And don't forget all the fat lazy and corrupt union workers who strangle
productivity because of stupid labor rules that require 5 shovel-leaners for
every one worker.

Hey **** you - if it hadn't been for those brave union workers who put
their lives and jobs on the line, we wouldn't have the workplace and
wage protections that we have now - 40 hour workweek, overtime
protection, workpace health and safety protection. In fact, all the
protections you have today are due to unions and other liberal ideas.
SO unless you want to be the first on the boat to go back and work in
some slave labor factory in China just for the sake of showing that the
bosses are always right and good, then shut the **** up!

[snip]

Those brave union workers who put their lives and jobs on the line are
not the same people as the fat lazy and corrupt union workers who
strangle productivity because of stupid labor rules.


What stupid labor rules are you referring to? Those rules are simply a
contract to deliver labor to management in a specific way. Instead of
management telling you what to do and how to do it and you having no say
other than to quit if you don't like it, labor and management negotiates
the rules by which the work gets done.

It's like delivering any other service - you just don't like the fact
that these workers have rights that you don't have. Are you envious or
jealous? why not admit it instead of calling these workers names
because you can't handle it?


I simply cut 'n' pasted what you and Oscar said and pasted them
together, to emphasize that you aren't talking about the same people.
Did you not notice the exact same wording, or do you not read what you
write?

I DO think it is ridiculous to require a union electrician to plug in
equipment, though.

Depends on where you are plugging stuff into and what else is plugged
into that circuit?

I work in photography and when I go up to NYC to photograph a dancer in
a Broadway show (as I did last summer), I can't just plug into any old
wall outlet. I don't know what the outlet is rated for, what else is
plugged in there, etc. So I get a union guy to do it. He or she is
responsible for knowing the condition of the electrical capacity in the
building or theater. He comes and checks out my equipment, makes sure
it isn't gonna blow up their electrical outlets or in any way keep them
from putting on a show. He knows if the outlet is live and if not, how
to turn it on. He knowns if it is switched off for a reason - it needs
to be repaired or perhaps other things are plugged into it and need to
be switched on and off for the show.

There are all sorts of pratical reasons why you need a union electrician
to do that work - would you want to plug in some cheap-assed made in
China electrical device and blow out an entire electrical panel and keep
a Broadway show from starting on time?

I know also that when my grandmother was n a nursing home, you couldn't
plug in any electrical devices into the wall without first having them
checked out by the custodial staff. You wouldn't want someone plugging
in some crappy old non-grounded lamp and tripping the breakers and
grandma's O2 generator goes out - would you?

You make some good points that I had not considered.

I've really got no dog in this fight. I think both of you are partly
correct. I know full well that I would not enjoy the benefits that I
have if it were not for the union organizers of yesteryear. I also
know that the demands of some unions became excessive in the 60s and
70s, and that some unions at certain points in time were infested by
the mob.

Mostly, I wanted to point out to the two of you that you were
comparing apples and oranges. The people who started the unions are
not the same people (or even the same quality of people) who run the
unions today.

"Tom Disque" wrote

I work in photography and when I go up to NYC to photograph a dancer in
a Broadway show (as I did last summer), I can't just plug into any old
wall outlet. I don't know what the outlet is rated for, what else is
plugged in there, etc. So I get a union guy to do it. He or she is
responsible for knowing the condition of the electrical capacity in the
building or theater. He comes and checks out my equipment, makes sure
it isn't gonna blow up their electrical outlets or in any way keep them
from putting on a show. He knows if the outlet is live and if not, how
to turn it on. He knowns if it is switched off for a reason - it needs
to be repaired or perhaps other things are plugged into it and need to
be switched on and off for the show.

There are all sorts of pratical reasons why you need a union electrician
to do that work - would you want to plug in some cheap-assed made in
China electrical device and blow out an entire electrical panel and keep
a Broadway show from starting on time?

I know also that when my grandmother was n a nursing home, you couldn't
plug in any electrical devices into the wall without first having them
checked out by the custodial staff. You wouldn't want someone plugging
in some crappy old non-grounded lamp and tripping the breakers and
grandma's O2 generator goes out - would you?

You make some good points that I had not considered.

Like what? It's a false dichotomy. You don't need a *union*
guy to do that -- you need a *qualified* guy to do that. The
"union" guy may be *more* likely to have BS certification for
all you know. You know, get passed along by the bureaucracy
like in a public school?

It's a similar thing for doctors and lawyers. I'm not against their
certification, I'm against the monopoly in deciding who gets to
practice medicine or law at all.

--Ted

On 2005-01-25, Edward M. Kennedy wrote:
"Tom Disque" wrote

I work in photography and when I go up to NYC to photograph a dancer in
a Broadway show (as I did last summer), I can't just plug into any old
wall outlet. I don't know what the outlet is rated for, what else is
plugged in there, etc. So I get a union guy to do it. He or she is
responsible for knowing the condition of the electrical capacity in the
building or theater. He comes and checks out my equipment, makes sure
it isn't gonna blow up their electrical outlets or in any way keep them
from putting on a show. He knows if the outlet is live and if not, how
to turn it on. He knowns if it is switched off for a reason - it needs
to be repaired or perhaps other things are plugged into it and need to
be switched on and off for the show.

There are all sorts of pratical reasons why you need a union electrician
to do that work - would you want to plug in some cheap-assed made in
China electrical device and blow out an entire electrical panel and keep
a Broadway show from starting on time?

I know also that when my grandmother was n a nursing home, you couldn't
plug in any electrical devices into the wall without first having them
checked out by the custodial staff. You wouldn't want someone plugging
in some crappy old non-grounded lamp and tripping the breakers and
grandma's O2 generator goes out - would you?

You make some good points that I had not considered.

Like what? It's a false dichotomy. You don't need a *union*
guy to do that -- you need a *qualified* guy to do that. The
"union" guy may be *more* likely to have BS certification for
all you know. You know, get passed along by the bureaucracy
like in a public school?

It's a similar thing for doctors and lawyers. I'm not against their
certification, I'm against the monopoly in deciding who gets to
practice medicine or law at all.


Interesting. How could the monopoly be eliminated and allow unbiased
certification.

--Ted




--
Wes Dukes (wdukes.pobox@com) Swap the . and the @ to email me please.

is a garbage address.

wrote

Like what? It's a false dichotomy. You don't need a *union*
guy to do that -- you need a *qualified* guy to do that. The
"union" guy may be *more* likely to have BS certification for
all you know. You know, get passed along by the bureaucracy
like in a public school?

It's a similar thing for doctors and lawyers. I'm not against their
certification, I'm against the monopoly in deciding who gets to
practice medicine or law at all.


Interesting. How could the monopoly be eliminated and allow unbiased
certification.

Reputation. A medical standards group that racks up a lot of
bozos with malpractice suits is dead in the water. Right now,
the system is not only biased, there's not much feedback.

There's no shortage of certification systems in the private market.
A bachelors degree in engineering from an *accredited* university
is also a form accredation. Microsoft does a lot too, as does the
Red Cross for lifeguards.

Hey, I used to be a lifeguard!

And you don't always need a formal education. Dweezil did not
need a *union* electrician, he just needed an electrician. How
he fobbed that off is beyond me, especially with most localities
requiring electricians to be licensed to boot. Disingenuous...

--Ted

wrote:

On 2005-01-25, Edward M. Kennedy wrote:
"Tom Disque" wrote

I work in photography and when I go up to NYC to photograph a dancer in
a Broadway show (as I did last summer), I can't just plug into any old
wall outlet. I don't know what the outlet is rated for, what else is
plugged in there, etc. So I get a union guy to do it. He or she is
responsible for knowing the condition of the electrical capacity in the
building or theater. He comes and checks out my equipment, makes sure
it isn't gonna blow up their electrical outlets or in any way keep them
from putting on a show. He knows if the outlet is live and if not, how
to turn it on. He knowns if it is switched off for a reason - it needs
to be repaired or perhaps other things are plugged into it and need to
be switched on and off for the show.

There are all sorts of pratical reasons why you need a union
electrician to do that work - would you want to plug in some
cheap-assed made in China electrical device and blow out an entire
electrical panel and keep a Broadway show from starting on time?

I know also that when my grandmother was n a nursing home, you couldn't
plug in any electrical devices into the wall without first having them
checked out by the custodial staff. You wouldn't want someone plugging
in some crappy old non-grounded lamp and tripping the breakers and
grandma's O2 generator goes out - would you?

You make some good points that I had not considered.

Like what? It's a false dichotomy. You don't need a *union*
guy to do that -- you need a *qualified* guy to do that. The
"union" guy may be *more* likely to have BS certification for
all you know. You know, get passed along by the bureaucracy
like in a public school?

It's a similar thing for doctors and lawyers. I'm not against their
certification, I'm against the monopoly in deciding who gets to
practice medicine or law at all.


Interesting. How could the monopoly be eliminated and allow unbiased
certification.

Why would you want /unbiased/ certification?!

--
Susan Hogarth
"We dissent, secondly, because the powers vested in Congress by this
constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative,
executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from
their ruins one consolidated government, which from the nature of things
will be an iron handed despotism, as nothing short of the supremacy of
despotic sway could connect and govern these United States under one
government."
- Minority opinion on the ratification of US Constitution

C G wrote:
USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:


USENET READER wrote:

I am starting a DYI home-improvement project and I notice
that few power or hand tools are made in the USA. Even
most of the Craftsman brand tools are made in the USA.
Some are made in Taiwan (a democracy I have no problem
doing business with) and Red China (perhaps I should call
them Fascist China, a country where the factories are
owned by the state and staffed with slave labor).








Are you stuck in the '80s? Most Chinese companies have
been privatized.







And who owns these private companies? Mostly it is
well-connected members of the ChiCom party - so for all
intents and purposes, it is still owned by those who run the
government.







Still stuck in the '80s. The ownership has been changing for
quite a while now, but I would not have expected you to be
informed enough to know this.







No actually - your head is up your ass. Can you tell me who
owns the private companies if not the party elite? They just
privatized these factories and now they split the profits not
with the workers, but with their American investors. So you
tell me how while it has changed in shape, the end result
isn't really different?







Seems it's your head up your own ass. China's got a thriving
stock market and ownership is shifting to individuals. I
wouldn't have expected you to know this, it bursts your bubble
of ignorance.







Bullshit - you can say that there is a stockmarket and that is
supposed to mean that your average rank and file Chinese citizen
can own stock? that is such bullshit - that whole thing is set
up to attract foreign investment capital and to also make it
easier to reward the party bigwigs. Their system is more
fascist than free-market capitalism. They could still take it
all back and leave their overseas investors hanging - what you
gonna do when they do that? Sue them?







You've just proven you do not know what the hell you are talking
about. The average citizen DOES OWN STOCK. Give up, you
obviously are clueless about this subject.







The average citizen in China doesn't own stock. Do you know what
the per capita or average income level is in China? There are
like 1.5 billion people over there. Can you show a cite where you
an prove that the average chinese citizen owns stock??






You don't know what the **** you are talking about, why don't you
just shut up idiot. I know many average chinese citizens. They
own stock. The ability of the average Chinese person to live cheap
and save would put most Americans to shame.





You know these citizens from where? You go over to China?




I know them from China, twit. You're an idiot who writes before
reading. I did go over to China, more times than I can remember. I
lived there for several years. I have friends from many different
income levels and from many different places including cities and the
country side. You obviously know nothing about China other than a
few things you read in the paper. As you've now shown, even your
reading skills are limited. I'm done talking to you. Go troll
somehwere else.



You went over to China more times than you can remember? Where did
you lve in China? If the Red Chinese let you over there, they didn't
let you run all over the country and see all the poverty and the
people who had no democratic freedom.


Keep going, you're showing more of your ignorance.

Are you saying that that I am somehow ignorant of the decrease in
poverty and the increase in democratic freedoms in China? Back it up -
and by something that can be proven - not just you saying that you lived
in China, which itself proves noting - since you can't prove you lived
there and I can't check it out. I can check out cites thatr you
provide, but perhaps that is why you haven't provided any.

If they can buy stocks, they can only buy the stocks the commie
*******s want them to buy.


Sure, whatever you say.

Moron - I haven't said anything - I WRITE to post on USENET - no wonder
you have problems understanding logic.


You make Red China sound like a bastion of freedom, democracy and
capitalism. Maybe you should talk to some Tibetans - they just love
the Red Chinese. Maybe you should just go the **** back there and
live - r starve. I don't care - either way you are a ****ing moron
who can't make a logical argument and can't cite any facts to back up
your claim.


I've backed up my claims, I have personal knowledge of the subject. You
only have a few distorted newspaper articles and an obvious predjudice
that has prevented you from learning much about what has happened in
China over the last 20 years. Get your head out of the paper. Go
experience life and then report back in a few years. Ni bu zhe dao
Zhonggua. Ni tai ben. Ni zui zui ben. Zaijian shagua. And no, I did
not need any help to write that. Go figure it out troll.



YOu have backed up nothing - you claim that you are right because you
lived in China. I don't know you (and don't want to know you), and you
can't prove that you lived there and there is no way to validate your
claims anyway. You offer no cites for facts to back up your claims,
unlike the ones that I have provided.

One of my bext friends from college is from Taiwan. He was very active
in the political system over there about 5 years ago, and he relocated
his business to mainland China because he speaks the language and he
would have a competitive advantage over people located in the states.
Talking with him when he comes back to the USA, and exchanging e-mail,
he tells me of a China that is definately not the China that you write
about. So what accounts for that difference? Probably because you are
full of shit and have never been to China.

Another associate of mine is a retired executive/engineer for an
American/Canadian company who worked in China for 5 years, retiring from
that job in mid 2004. He tells me the same thing that my other friend
who lives in China - the economy sucks and there is no democracy for the
average Chinese worker. Also he tells me that it is not uncommon to
see workers missing body parts or otherwise severely injured because
there are no workplace safety and health protections in China. So how
are they better off than we are?

I roomed with a very cute girl from Taiwan, who has a mother and sisters
over in Taiwan. I also have two friends who teach college-level courses
in Taiwan. They all watch the mainland and they say that things aren't
as good as you claim them to be.

So I ask you again - do you have anything other than your word to back
up your claim that things in China are doing great? You say don't read
the newspapers - but what should I read for factual information to back
up your claims? Can you cite just 3 sources of information that back up
your claims? If you can't - you lose and shut the **** up!

Read to the end - Oscar is a ****ing traitor - line his ass up against
the wall!

Oscar_Lives wrote:

"USENET READER" wrote in message
nk.net...


Neill wrote:

"USENET READER" wrote in message
thlink.net...


You don't know what the **** you are talking about, why don't you just
shut up idiot. I know many average chinese citizens. They own stock.
The ability of the average Chinese person to live cheap and save would
put most Americans to shame.

You know these citizens from where? You go over to China? What is the
per capita income in China? You are so ****ing full of shit- it's not
like they make American wages and live in poverty by choice.


A repressed demofag, aren't you a joy!

Talking about personal attacks? You don't have any information or cites
to back up your claims, so you call someone a fag. What kind of a
fart-shiffing, crypto-fascists Bush lover are you?

China is getting rich on the imbalance of trade with the USA and from US
investments, not from slave-labor chinese workers buying stock. The
imbalance of trade ends up enriching the ChiCom officials and their US
Investors, and they end up owning more and more of US debt - they really
can't do anything else with all that money!

Doucheboy - why don't you come up with some numbers to prove your point
- what percentage of Chinese workers own stock, what is the per capita
income of those workers, and what percentage of their income do they
invest in the Chinese stock market? Or do you mean Chinese people
living and investing in the US market?


Personal attacks a point don't make.

Dickhead.



And do I want to live in ****ing squallor in the US just to make you
feel happy and superior - and to make some rich puke even richer?


I doubt you live in squalor, fag boy.



Sorry dingleberry - my famly came from Italy and Slovakia, and those
days of anyone from my family dancing on the end of a string for the Man
while living on some feudal manor and owing my soul to the Company
Store are ****ing over - you hear me? You and the rest of you rich
cocksuckers had better realize that your $7.00 rent a cops aren't gonna
protect you from the masses when we get ****ed and rise up to come after
you behind the walls of your gated community. And if you don't live
behind those gates - why the **** are you standing up for those rich
pukes anyway?


No, but say hello to my Colt .45



According to the news sources I have, even though the companies are
being privatized, the new owners are still the party elite and their
overseas business partners. Employee or other non-management stock
ownership is being held to 20% or less. So how the **** can you say
that the average Chinese citizen owns stock? Prove it - show me a

cite!


Because I have many friends in China. I've done better than read a few
news articles, I've lived there.

Right - did you move to china before or after your cousin pulled the
wrench out of the door of his car? What city and province did you live
in and why were you there in the first place. Because where you lived -
if you did live there - certainly colored your perspective of what is an
average Chinese person. If you lived in a big city, you might have been
living with a shitload of Chinese people, but they were far from average
- they were the top of the economic pile in China.


What's with the class division, fag boy? Are you not only repressed, but
poor, too. Damn, that's what you get for believing the communist lies
your
faggot friends were telling you. Be careful, they only want to **** you
in
the ass, but then, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know,
eh,
fag boy?

When asked for a cite, all you can do is cal me a fag - that means you
don't have a ****ing clue.

I on the other hand can show cites that Chinese labor doesn't own stock
and that companies like Wal Mart actually hurt American workers more than
they help them:


From http://cecd.aers.psu.edu/pubs/PovertyResearchWM.pdf

Wal-Mart and County-Wide Poverty
October 18, 2004
AERS STAFF PAPER No. 371

Conclusion
After carefully and comprehensively accounting for other local
determinants of poverty, we find that the presence of Wal-Mart
unequivocally raised family poverty rates in US counties
during the 1990s relative to places that had no such stores. This was true
not only as a consequence of existing stores in a county in 1987, but it
was also an independent outcome of the location of new stores between 1987
and 1998. The question whether the cost of relatively
higher poverty in a county is offset by the benefits of lower prices and
wider choices available to consumers associated with a Wal-Mart store
cannot be answered here.

However, if Wal-Mart does contribute to a higher poverty rate, then it is
not bearing the full economic and social costs of its business practices.
Instead, Wal-Mart transfers income from the working poor and from
taxpayers though welfare-programs directed at the poor to
stockholders and the heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune, as well as to
consumers. These transfers are in addition to the public infrastructure
subsidies often provided by local communities. Regardless of the
distributional effects, the Wal-Mart business model appears to extract
cumulative rents that exceed those earned by owners of other corporations,
including Microsoft.

From http://edworkforce.house.gov/democra...MARTREPORT.pdf

EVERYDAY LOW WAGES:
THE HIDDEN PRICE WE ALL PAY FOR WAL-MART
A REPORT BY THE DEMOCRATIC STAFF OF THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE MILLER (D-CA), SENIOR DEMOCRAT
FEBRUARY 16, 2004

Wal-Mart maintains an extensive global network of 10,000 suppliers.74
Whether American, Bangladeshi, Chinese, or Honduran, Wal-Mart plays these
producers against one another in search of lower and lower prices.
American suppliers have been forced to relocate their businesses overseas
to maintain Wal-Mart contracts.75 Overseas manufacturers are forced to
engage in cutthroat competition that further erodes wages and working
conditions of what often already are sweatshops. To keep up with the
pressure to produce ever cheaper goods, factories force employees to work
overtime or work for weeks without a day off. A Bangladeshi factory worker
told the Los Angeles Times that employees at her factory worked from 8
a.m. to 3 a.m. for 10 and 15 day stretches just to meet Wal-Mart price
demands. And still, Wal-Mart’sgeneral manager for Bangladesh complained of
his country’s factories, telling the Los Angeles Times, “I think they need
to improve. When I entered a factory in China, it seemed they are very
fast.”76

While low-wage jobs displace higher-paid manufacturing jobs in the United
States, undercutting living standards at home, living standards abroad are
not reaping the benefits one might expect. Reports indicate that Wal-Mart’s
bargaining power is able to maintain low wages and poor working conditions
among its foreign suppliers. The Washington Post has explained: “As
capital scours the globe for cheaper and more malleable workers, and as
poor countries seek multinational companies to provide jobs, lift
production, and open export markets, Wal-Mart and China have forged
themselves into the ultimate joint venture, their symbiosis influencing
the terms of labor and consumption the world over.”77 Thanks to a ban on
independent trade unions and a lack of other basic human rights, China
offers Wal-Mart a highly-disciplined and cheap workforce. A Chinese labor
official who asked to remain anonymous for fear of punishment told the
Washington Post that “Wal-Mart pressures the factory to cut its price, and
the factory responds with longer hours or lower pay. And the workers have
no options.”78

One employee of a Chinese supplier described the difficulties of surviving
on $75 per month. She could rarely afford to buy meat, and her family
largely subsisted on vegetables. Over four years, she had not received a
single salary increase.79

Wal-Mart has countered that it insists that its suppliers enforce labor
standards and comply with Chinese law. One-hundred Wal-Mart auditors
inspect Chinese plants, and the company has suspended contracts with about
400 suppliers, mainly for violating overtime limits. An additional 72
factories were permanently blacklisted in 2003 for violating child labor
standards. Still, critics point out that the Wal-Mart does not regularly
inspect smaller factories that use middlemen to sell to the company. Nor
does it inspect the factories of subcontractors. A Chinese labor organizer
explained that the inspections are “ineffective,” since Wal-Mart usually
notifies the factories in advance. The factories “often prepare by
cleaning up, creating fake time sheets and briefing workers on what to
say.”80

The factories themselves complain that, because Wal-Mart demands such low
prices, they have slim profit margins – if any. A manager of one Chinese
supplier told the Washington Post, “In the beginning, we made money … But
when Wal-Mart started to launch nationwide distribution, they pressured us
for a special price below our cost. Now, we’re losing money on every box,
while Wal-Mart is making more money.”81 Obviously, one way to regain a
profit for such suppliers would be to begin cutting back on labor costs.

Finally, as testament to Wal-Mart’s stalwart anti-union policy, none of
its 31 stores in China are unionized, despite the fact that the Communist
Party-controlled official union has told the company that it would not
help workers fight for higher pay.82 Oddly enough, Article 10 of China’s
Trade Union Law requires that any establishment with 25 or more workers
must have a union. Wal-Mart, however, claims that it has received
assurances from the central government that it need not allow unions in
any of its stores.83 As one reporter has explained, “The explanation for
the apparent contradiction may be that the government’s desire for
foreigninvestment and jobs trumps any concern for workers’ rights. That
wouldn’t be surprising in the Chinese environment, where strikes are
forbidden and the official labor grouping actively supports the government’s
efforts to block the rise of independent unions.”84 With China, any
company in search of pliant and cheap labor has found a perfect mix of
cooperative government officials and workers made submissive through fear.

How the **** can anyone who hasn't had a wage increase in years and can't
afford to put food on the table and works from 8 AM until 3 AM afford to
buy stock? When do they find the time to run down to the stock broker's
office to make their purchase? Or do they do it on line?


Management decides what to build, labor decides whether they will do it
well or not. Some choose to be sloppy.

And who should put quality control on the assembly line to catch that
shit? Management should have but didn't.


Sure, point the finger at everyone but yourself. Ever hear of
accountability? No? I guess not, because you want to blame God for making
you a fag. Instead of taking responsibility for yourself., you want
everyone
else to be responsible for you. Too bad, fag boy!

Again - what an asshole - when given an example of something that you
can't refute, you call me a fag. Clearly the loser in this thread is
you - you can't even make a logical arguent to support your claims and
cannot offer cites in support of your claims.


And MANY, MANY, MANY more DO HAVE A CHOICE, and choose cheap.



Sorry - very very very very very few people actually have a choice on
what to buy these days - they aren't the buyers for the stores and don't
have a say on what goes on the shelves.

Do you think that customers tell Wal-Mart what to put on the shelves to
sell? **** no - Wal-Mart tells vendors what they will buy an item for,
and in fact tells them to move the production over to China in order to
make it cheaper. GE did that too with many of the vendors who supplied
parts for GE consumer products. When a company like Wal-Mart moves close
to one in four of a growing number of products sold in the country, the
customer has damn little to say about where things are made, expecially
when the loss of those jobs forces people to buy cheaper stuff to make
their money last longer. It's a race to the bottom.


Sorry, but, Wal-Mart gives their customers what they want, whether you
like
or not, fag boy! Quit worrying about everybody else, and get a life.



Do people know that when they shop at Wal-Mart, they are shopping
themselves out of jobs?

Quit selling out your birthright and your country you ****ing fascist
asshole - and get ready for the time when we put your ass against the wall
and shoot you with the rest of the pukes. You want a blindfold, or not?
Menthol or regular?

From http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's
relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and
force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the
unemployment line?

Therein lies the basic conundrum of doing business with the world's
largest retailer. By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most
grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its
customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent
decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand.
Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying
spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from
farm field to factory to financial statement.

Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that
never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer
relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every
day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the
companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the
economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of
pickles at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest
possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached.
The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that
don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must
drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart
and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices.
Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors.
To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from
bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close
U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S.
companies direct access to the American market. "One of the things that
limits or slows the growth of imports is the cost of establishing
connections and networks," says Paul Krugman, the Princeton University
economist. "Wal-Mart is so big and so centralized that it can all at once
hook Chinese and other suppliers into its digital system. So--wham!--you
have a large switch to overseas sourcing in a period quicker than under
the old rules of retailing."

Steve Dobbins has been bearing the brunt of that switch. He's president
and CEO of Carolina Mills, a 75-year-old North Carolina company that
supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel makers--half of
which supply Wal-Mart. Carolina Mills grew steadily until 2000. But in the
past three years, as its customers have gone either overseas or out of
business, it has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees
to 1,200. Dobbins's customers have begun to face imported clothing sold so
cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete even if they paid their
workers nothing.

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply?
How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held
inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you
can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out
of jobs."




I'm a ****ing Wal-Mart stockholder! I am cleaning up while you pout about
your steward job that went down the drain.

And you're proud of that? You make money from a company that takes good
jobs from workers and replaces them with crappy jobs that pay less with
fewer benefits. A company that gets corporate welfare it doesn't need,
and that sends so much money over to China that will eventually come
back in the form of a Chinese military power that will threaten our
freedom. You sir are a ****ing traitor!

I never worked as a steward - one more thing you are obviously so wrong
about.

Tom Disque wrote:

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 20:14:32 GMT, USENET READER
wrote:


Tom Disque wrote:


On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 08:08:57 GMT, USENET READER
wrote:



Tom Disque wrote:



On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 02:06:01 GMT, USENET READER
wrote:




Oscar_Lives wrote:

[snip]




And don't forget all the fat lazy and corrupt union workers who strangle
productivity because of stupid labor rules that require 5 shovel-leaners for
every one worker.

Hey **** you - if it hadn't been for those brave union workers who put
their lives and jobs on the line, we wouldn't have the workplace and
wage protections that we have now - 40 hour workweek, overtime
protection, workpace health and safety protection. In fact, all the
protections you have today are due to unions and other liberal ideas.
SO unless you want to be the first on the boat to go back and work in
some slave labor factory in China just for the sake of showing that the
bosses are always right and good, then shut the **** up!

[snip]

Those brave union workers who put their lives and jobs on the line are
not the same people as the fat lazy and corrupt union workers who
strangle productivity because of stupid labor rules.


What stupid labor rules are you referring to? Those rules are simply a
contract to deliver labor to management in a specific way. Instead of
management telling you what to do and how to do it and you having no say
other than to quit if you don't like it, labor and management negotiates
the rules by which the work gets done.

It's like delivering any other service - you just don't like the fact
that these workers have rights that you don't have. Are you envious or
jealous? why not admit it instead of calling these workers names
because you can't handle it?


I simply cut 'n' pasted what you and Oscar said and pasted them
together, to emphasize that you aren't talking about the same people.
Did you not notice the exact same wording, or do you not read what you
write?

I DO think it is ridiculous to require a union electrician to plug in
equipment, though.

Depends on where you are plugging stuff into and what else is plugged
into that circuit?

I work in photography and when I go up to NYC to photograph a dancer in
a Broadway show (as I did last summer), I can't just plug into any old
wall outlet. I don't know what the outlet is rated for, what else is
plugged in there, etc. So I get a union guy to do it. He or she is
responsible for knowing the condition of the electrical capacity in the
building or theater. He comes and checks out my equipment, makes sure
it isn't gonna blow up their electrical outlets or in any way keep them

from putting on a show. He knows if the outlet is live and if not, how

to turn it on. He knowns if it is switched off for a reason - it needs
to be repaired or perhaps other things are plugged into it and need to
be switched on and off for the show.

There are all sorts of pratical reasons why you need a union electrician
to do that work - would you want to plug in some cheap-assed made in
China electrical device and blow out an entire electrical panel and keep
a Broadway show from starting on time?

I know also that when my grandmother was n a nursing home, you couldn't
plug in any electrical devices into the wall without first having them
checked out by the custodial staff. You wouldn't want someone plugging
in some crappy old non-grounded lamp and tripping the breakers and
grandma's O2 generator goes out - would you?


You make some good points that I had not considered.

I've really got no dog in this fight. I think both of you are partly
correct. I know full well that I would not enjoy the benefits that I
have if it were not for the union organizers of yesteryear. I also
know that the demands of some unions became excessive in the 60s and
70s, and that some unions at certain points in time were infested by
the mob.

I am not endorsing any illegal or excessive actions by any unions or
groups that supported them, but do you not see that there is a
difference between labor and management? So what if the demands of the
unions were excessive? Are the demands of management any less so? Are
any of these superstar CEOs worth the money they are paid for driving
companies into bankruptcy? Are the corporate directors - who are
managers in other companies themselves - acting in the stockholders best
interests or their own selfish interest? So what if the mob got into
the pension funds of unions - do you not think that there is much more
money being made illegally by groups other than unions and mobs these
days with all the greedy CEOs?

Know what Vito Corleone told his sons - "A lawyer with a briefcase can
steal more money than a hood with a gun!" And in the front of that same
book - "Behind every great fortune - there is a crime!" Look at the
world's great fortunes and you will see crime - from Rockefeller, to
Getty, to Gates, Bush and Cheney. The Walton family fortune also comes
from crime - from hiring illegals to clean up stores that are illegally
locked down at night, to making employees work off the clock, etc.

Mostly, I wanted to point out to the two of you that you were
comparing apples and oranges. The people who started the unions are
not the same people (or even the same quality of people) who run the
unions today.

So what - are you saying that the people who run companies today are
saints? Or that John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO is a crook like Ken Lay,
Bernie Ebbers, and the rest of the ****ing corporate criminal elite? I
think that John Sweeney is better educated and a better quality person
than either Sam Gompers or Jimmy Hoffa? He ain't no crook, and he is a
better quality person than the sociopaths who run today's corporations.

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:


USENET READER wrote:

I am starting a DYI home-improvement project and I notice
that few power or hand tools are made in the USA. Even
most of the Craftsman brand tools are made in the USA.
Some are made in Taiwan (a democracy I have no problem
doing business with) and Red China (perhaps I should call
them Fascist China, a country where the factories are
owned by the state and staffed with slave labor).









Are you stuck in the '80s? Most Chinese companies have
been privatized.








And who owns these private companies? Mostly it is
well-connected members of the ChiCom party - so for all
intents and purposes, it is still owned by those who run
the government.








Still stuck in the '80s. The ownership has been changing
for quite a while now, but I would not have expected you to
be informed enough to know this.








No actually - your head is up your ass. Can you tell me who
owns the private companies if not the party elite? They just
privatized these factories and now they split the profits not
with the workers, but with their American investors. So you
tell me how while it has changed in shape, the end result
isn't really different?








Seems it's your head up your own ass. China's got a thriving
stock market and ownership is shifting to individuals. I
wouldn't have expected you to know this, it bursts your bubble
of ignorance.








Bullshit - you can say that there is a stockmarket and that is
supposed to mean that your average rank and file Chinese
citizen can own stock? that is such bullshit - that whole thing
is set up to attract foreign investment capital and to also
make it easier to reward the party bigwigs. Their system is
more fascist than free-market capitalism. They could still take
it all back and leave their overseas investors hanging - what
you gonna do when they do that? Sue them?








You've just proven you do not know what the hell you are talking
about. The average citizen DOES OWN STOCK. Give up, you
obviously are clueless about this subject.








The average citizen in China doesn't own stock. Do you know what
the per capita or average income level is in China? There are
like 1.5 billion people over there. Can you show a cite where
you an prove that the average chinese citizen owns stock??







You don't know what the **** you are talking about, why don't you
just shut up idiot. I know many average chinese citizens. They
own stock. The ability of the average Chinese person to live cheap
and save would put most Americans to shame.






You know these citizens from where? You go over to China?





I know them from China, twit. You're an idiot who writes before
reading. I did go over to China, more times than I can remember. I
lived there for several years. I have friends from many different
income levels and from many different places including cities and
the country side. You obviously know nothing about China other than
a few things you read in the paper. As you've now shown, even your
reading skills are limited. I'm done talking to you. Go troll
somehwere else.




You went over to China more times than you can remember? Where did
you lve in China? If the Red Chinese let you over there, they didn't
let you run all over the country and see all the poverty and the
people who had no democratic freedom.



Keep going, you're showing more of your ignorance.


Are you saying that that I am somehow ignorant of the decrease in
poverty and the increase in democratic freedoms in China? Back it up -
and by something that can be proven - not just you saying that you lived
in China, which itself proves noting - since you can't prove you lived
there and I can't check it out. I can check out cites thatr you
provide, but perhaps that is why you haven't provided any.

I don't have to prove shit to you moron. I lived in China. People who
know me know it's a fact. Ever see a US passport that was issued at the
Hong Kong consulate? Didn't think so, but I've got one. There's at
least one person I work with who follows this NG. If I'm lying about
living in China, I'm sure he'll say so.



If they can buy stocks, they can only buy the stocks the commie
*******s want them to buy.



Sure, whatever you say.


Moron - I haven't said anything - I WRITE to post on USENET - no wonder
you have problems understanding logic.

You are such a petty fool.




You make Red China sound like a bastion of freedom, democracy and
capitalism. Maybe you should talk to some Tibetans - they just love
the Red Chinese. Maybe you should just go the **** back there and
live - r starve. I don't care - either way you are a ****ing moron
who can't make a logical argument and can't cite any facts to back up
your claim.



I've backed up my claims, I have personal knowledge of the subject.
You only have a few distorted newspaper articles and an obvious
predjudice that has prevented you from learning much about what has
happened in China over the last 20 years. Get your head out of the
paper. Go experience life and then report back in a few years. Ni bu
zhe dao Zhonggua. Ni tai ben. Ni zui zui ben. Zaijian shagua. And
no, I did not need any help to write that. Go figure it out troll.



YOu have backed up nothing - you claim that you are right because you
lived in China. I don't know you (and don't want to know you), and you
can't prove that you lived there and there is no way to validate your
claims anyway. You offer no cites for facts to back up your claims,
unlike the ones that I have provided.

I can prove I lived there, but you are not worth the time. Did your
cite prove people can't, and don't, own stock? Nope.


One of my bext friends from college is from Taiwan. He was very active
in the political system over there about 5 years ago, and he relocated
his business to mainland China because he speaks the language and he
would have a competitive advantage over people located in the states.
Talking with him when he comes back to the USA, and exchanging e-mail,
he tells me of a China that is definately not the China that you write
about. So what accounts for that difference? Probably because you are
full of shit and have never been to China.

What China have I written about? I've talked about common people being
able to buy stocks. The rest of the things about democracy and freedom
are things you added. Yet more examples of your inability to read and
comprehend.


Another associate of mine is a retired executive/engineer for an
American/Canadian company who worked in China for 5 years, retiring from
that job in mid 2004. He tells me the same thing that my other friend
who lives in China - the economy sucks and there is no democracy for the
average Chinese worker. Also he tells me that it is not uncommon to
see workers missing body parts or otherwise severely injured because
there are no workplace safety and health protections in China. So how
are they better off than we are?

Once again, you are showing you can't read. I never talked about any of
this stuff, although I know all about it. Where did you get your
ability to fabricate?


I roomed with a very cute girl from Taiwan, who has a mother and sisters
over in Taiwan. I also have two friends who teach college-level courses
in Taiwan. They all watch the mainland and they say that things aren't
as good as you claim them to be.

Well isn't that special. I never claimed they were good. I said common
people can, and do, buy stock. The rest is stuff you imagine I said.


So I ask you again - do you have anything other than your word to back
up your claim that things in China are doing great? You say don't read
the newspapers - but what should I read for factual information to back
up your claims? Can you cite just 3 sources of information that back up
your claims? If you can't - you lose and shut the **** up!

I told you. Go there. Visit some farms in the country side. Work in
15 to 20 cities. Talk to some (mainland) Chinese instead of just
Taiwanese who's view of mainland China is biased. Marry one, instead of
rooming with a "cute girl from Taiwan". Once you've done some of these
things, you'll have a better idea of what China is like.

Later troll.

Edward M. Kennedy wrote:

wrote


Like what? It's a false dichotomy. You don't need a *union*
guy to do that -- you need a *qualified* guy to do that. The
"union" guy may be *more* likely to have BS certification for
all you know. You know, get passed along by the bureaucracy
like in a public school?

It's a similar thing for doctors and lawyers. I'm not against their
certification, I'm against the monopoly in deciding who gets to
practice medicine or law at all.


Interesting. How could the monopoly be eliminated and allow unbiased
certification.


Reputation. A medical standards group that racks up a lot of
bozos with malpractice suits is dead in the water. Right now,
the system is not only biased, there's not much feedback.

There's no shortage of certification systems in the private market.
A bachelors degree in engineering from an *accredited* university
is also a form accredation. Microsoft does a lot too, as does the
Red Cross for lifeguards.

You raise an interesting point. The problem is that those
certifications and degrees cost money out front before you even get a
job that might not be there when you graduate.

One of the things that a union has done in the past is to have a system
for new workers to come into a system as a helper or apprentice and work
and learn at the same time, until they passed some sort of
certification. And they didn't have to take out loans or pay someone to
teach them - they learned on the job while they were getting paid. And
while they were learning, they had job protection. What could possibly
be wrong with that?


Hey, I used to be a lifeguard!

And you don't always need a formal education. Dweezil did not
need a *union* electrician, he just needed an electrician. How
he fobbed that off is beyond me, especially with most localities
requiring electricians to be licensed to boot. Disingenuous...

One way to earn that certification or license is to work with a
qualified person for a certain period of time and then pass a test.
What problem could you possibly have with that? I mean - a person who
has a license and is certified and properly trained will probably wire
your house better than a guy who never took a class, never worked
alongside a certified electrician, never apprenticed, etc.

"USENET READER" wrote

Reputation. A medical standards group that racks up a lot of
bozos with malpractice suits is dead in the water. Right now,
the system is not only biased, there's not much feedback.

There's no shortage of certification systems in the private market.
A bachelors degree in engineering from an *accredited* university
is also a form accredation. Microsoft does a lot too, as does the
Red Cross for lifeguards.

You raise an interesting point. The problem is that those
certifications and degrees cost money out front before you even get a
job that might not be there when you graduate.

If you can't hold a job and earn certifications from Microsoft
at the same time, you aren't very employable to begin with.

"Would you like to supersize that?" And don't leave the nest
until you can fly.

One of the things that a union has done in the past is to have a system
for new workers to come into a system as a helper or apprentice and work
and learn at the same time, until they passed some sort of
certification. And they didn't have to take out loans or pay someone to
teach them - they learned on the job while they were getting paid. And
while they were learning, they had job protection. What could possibly
be wrong with that?

Nothing. The false dichotomy (again) is that you need a union
to have apprenticeships. Many, many professions have some
form of this.

--Ted

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 12:23:17 -0500, "Edward M. Kennedy"
wrote:

"Tom Disque" wrote

I work in photography and when I go up to NYC to photograph a dancer in
a Broadway show (as I did last summer), I can't just plug into any old
wall outlet. I don't know what the outlet is rated for, what else is
plugged in there, etc. So I get a union guy to do it. He or she is
responsible for knowing the condition of the electrical capacity in the
building or theater. He comes and checks out my equipment, makes sure
it isn't gonna blow up their electrical outlets or in any way keep them
from putting on a show. He knows if the outlet is live and if not, how
to turn it on. He knowns if it is switched off for a reason - it needs
to be repaired or perhaps other things are plugged into it and need to
be switched on and off for the show.

There are all sorts of pratical reasons why you need a union electrician
to do that work - would you want to plug in some cheap-assed made in
China electrical device and blow out an entire electrical panel and keep
a Broadway show from starting on time?

I know also that when my grandmother was n a nursing home, you couldn't
plug in any electrical devices into the wall without first having them
checked out by the custodial staff. You wouldn't want someone plugging
in some crappy old non-grounded lamp and tripping the breakers and
grandma's O2 generator goes out - would you?

You make some good points that I had not considered.

Like what? It's a false dichotomy. You don't need a *union*
guy to do that -- you need a *qualified* guy to do that. The
"union" guy may be *more* likely to have BS certification for
all you know. You know, get passed along by the bureaucracy
like in a public school?

It's a similar thing for doctors and lawyers. I'm not against their
certification, I'm against the monopoly in deciding who gets to
practice medicine or law at all.

--Ted

You make better points!