Les Bonnes Choses

I don't mean to sound anti-union (though, admittedly, I am anti-union), but what with all the talk about the automotive sector in the news, I wanted to check a few things out. It kind of definitely bothers me that so much of our economy is dependent on cars, one way or the other. Our cities are designed around them (I am now taking great effort to avoid an urban sprawl rant), the flow of money requires that they are regularly replaced, we wouldn't even be in the middle east, were it not for their oil ... the list goes on. Now that I am on the cusp of graduating after (2008 - 1979 = 29) 29!!!! years in school, I'm hoping I can look forward to a decent job before too long. Know what would be nice? A job that paid as well as those CAW jobs that are drying up. After their last round of negotiations, workers in the top of three tiers could expect to make $62/hr. Calculating a yearly income from an hourly wage is easy enough: multiply the rate by 2000 (50 weeks * 40 hours). That's $120,000 per year. The second-rate workers? They can expect $47/hr, or approximately $90K per year. To piece together Ford Explorers. Or maybe just push the buttons on the machines that put together Ford Explorers. I don't know. What I do know is that it's much clearer why the heck these companies are in danger of going bankrupt (I mean, aside from not adapting to the changing times and instead relying on old cash cows like SUVs built on 40 year old technology).