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You know what disgusts me? Your complete blindness to how good your father had it. As a not-so-recent immigrant to the US, I've found it laughably easy to have a good life here. I am not talking about myself since I came at 25 and spoke enough English to get by. I am talking older relatives and their friends, people well into their 50's who did not speak a word of English. There is an absolute wealth of opportunities - classes at community colleges that you can take for near free, paying jobs where you have plenty of time for studying while taking care of the elderly for example, charitable organizations that assist you in everything from relocation to getting jobs, government programs that give you bridge money to get you on your feet, and so on.

If you think your father had a rough life, you are truly a spoiled brat. My father almost starved to death as a teenager during World War II, almost died from tuberculosis as a young man, shared a small one-bedroom apartment with 5 people as an adult, and was forced to abandon even that little due to ethnic conflict. Your father on the other hand, had it so easy that he could afford to put his kids through college and still retire after just 25 years of work. Oh, excuse me, I forgot. Your dad had to endure a 2-3 hour commute because it would be so traumatizing for his kids to switch schools once.

Your father and his buddies are who needs to get off the high horse, my friend. They've worked in a little bubble with their cushy guaranteed pay and benefits for too long. It's about time they ventured out on their own into the big bad world that the rest of us happily inhabit.

Best comment on the thread. Thanks for injecting some much needed perspective. I'd venture to say that 99% of the people that post on HN (this obviously includes me) live like relative Kings.

Hear, hear. I was going to post something like this because I have lived among people in third-world countries who actually have it hard (total understatement), but it's better that it came from someone with immediate family who lived it.

woah woah woah! i appreciate your zeal and your need to direct your anger somewhere, but your sending it the wrong way buddy. my original comment was not meant to express how hard mine or my family's life is/was, it was to clear up statements like this:

"union workers at gm who make 8x the wages, do less work"

It's simply not true, and it does disgust me that we feel the need to degrade a whole class of people to make the point that the system is fucked up. i'll be the first one to say that all of us who live in the country are extremely lucky and this goes often quite unappreciated. maybe not my father, but both my grandfathers have similar story's to your own. i thank god everyday for the opportunity afforded to me and my family.

"Your father on the other hand, had it so easy that he could afford to put his kids through college and still retire after just 25 years of work. Oh, excuse me, I forgot. Your dad had to endure a 2-3 hour commute because it would be so traumatizing for his kids to switch schools once."

listen man, i'm not getting into a pissing contest with you. your taking little tidbits of my words and making them into the story that you want. you don't know my story nor my families.

the point of my original comment was that for the most part auto-workers are honest, working people like the rest of us. there's plenty of room for rational argument on what should happen to the auto industry, i just can't agree with the constant barrage of comments insinuating that people like my father are lazy, unappreciative, and somehow got what's coming to them for just doing what anyone of us would do in their situation.

How am I taking tidbits of your words and making them into a story that I want? I simply called you out on exactly what you said, both your facts and your angry, self-righteous tone.

You said your father has put you through college and has retired after 25 years. Presuming he started working at 25, we have him retiring at what, 50? Who pays for their kids' college and retires at 50? Investment bankers and plastic surgeons, that's who. The rest of the country works well into old age (most without adequate health insurance) and has their kids taking on student loans.

You opened your comment with anger, talking about your disgust, accusing crabapple of over-generalization and ignorance, and essentially dismissing all of us as moneybags who use hypothetical Denny's waitresses to degrade your family or ignore your hardship. (Read: shut up and fork over the money - or, pardon me, you stated that you are as of yet undecided whether it would benefit your family, so I guess we'll just sit tight and wait for your decision.)

You accuse me of zeal and psycho-analyze my anger but I am just reacting to the broad-daylight robbery that is taking place. People like you think that if they make a lot of noise and talk about their dads working their asses of for x number of years, we'll all get misty eyed and just hand over our money.

You are now getting a dose of your own medicine. I take your dad's 2-hour commute and raise you mine's World War II. Ridiculous, isn't it. When auto workers and their families stop blanketing the internet with their sob stories, we'll stop commenting on them. Over.

no where did i say my dad only worked 25 years. i said he worked for gm over 25 years. does this mean it was his first job, no? as for student loans, i certainly do have them. it's unfortunate that in this country simply getting student loans will not pay for a four year school. again, i believe i said "benefit my country or my family". do i have to go on? seriously, this is the classic case of reading what you want to read to form the picture to fit your preconceived notions.

sure, "you raise me" wwII. wtf? i'm sorry for what your dad went through, but so did my grandparents who were born in eastern europe and escaped to america. i just don't get this idea that you can't feel any compassion if someone didn't escape genocide. there's a lot more complexity to people's stories than you may realize.

my simple point is not that you should cry for any autoworker or even give them a dime. i'm just sick of hearing statement like crabapple's which completely exaggerate the facts.

* 8x wages - no * no deductable healthcare - not for 10 years * work less - by my personal experience, no

it comes from this characature of what the reality is. the fact is AMERICANS ARE PRIVILEGED. i get it. i'm not asking anyone to cry for my family. what i am saying is that chances are most auto workers are hard working people like the rest of us. i know my father didn't escape ethnic conflict in europe in wwII, but he certainly did the best of his ability to provide for his family. i'm not saying that deserves your money, but i am saying that it doesn't deserve to be belittled.

hmmm... you know i just wrote this, and i'm realizing i'm just falling into this trap needless argument. looking back at my thread i think i approached crabapple's initial comment with way too much zeal myself. the thing that irked me the most about crabapple's comment was not the point (ie agreeing with mit romney's position), but the way in which he/she went about making it. by perpetuating this characature of the "uaw king", i feel like it belittles honest, working americans like my father. i realize that my father was lucky for being born in america after wwII, but he did the best he could with the hand he was dealt and my pride certainly show through.

You're talking like his job was an entitlement. Companies go bust and people lose jobs, it happens a lot.

The reason people are talking UAW workers that way, is not because they begrudge the individual worker like your father - they don't.

It's because the car companies were not allowed to fire or lay off people as they wished, which gives a very strong impression of entitlement and job guarantees amongst UAW workers that no one else in america has.

If you got rid of that, and allowed car companies to hire and fire and set wages as they desired, people wouldn't be so opposed to the bailout. Personally I would support the bailout only if the company became non-union. So long as they stay unionized they will never survive, and the bailout will be wasted money.

As a whole UAW was very destructive to the auto business - not allowing a company to fire people, or change wages, is a great way to destroy a company - and they succeeded.

100 miles each way? That's about 4 hours of driving each day, add in overtime, and there's nothing left to your day. Why not find a closer job?

"entitlement and job guarantees amongst UAW workers that no one else in america has"

Well about 10% of Americans work for the government in some respect. How often do they get fired, in spite of doing nothing?

(Disclaimer: I once worked for State Government. I'm not sure how much work UAW members did, but I can't see how anyone can get less done than Government Employees did. For every one that worked really hard, there were three that were simply showing up and waiting for retirement.)

I don't think 3/4 of teachers, police, and the military simply show up and are waiting for retirement. They might not put in 110% as it where but they still get a lot of stuff done. I think it's the Government office workers that don't really do much but most private sector office workers don't seem to get much done so I wonder how much less effective they really are. (Cue XKCD comic "it's time for science" or some such.)

3/4ths of teachers sounds about reasonable.

Yea, I was trying to show a trend. Plenty of teachers stopped caring a long time ago and there is also a lot of dead weight in the police and military but the less what they do is an "office job" the more effort they seem to put in. There is plenty of dead wood in the forest service, but smoke jumpers as a group put in a lot of hard work.

huh?? in the last 15 years gm has closed dozens of plants. yes, certainly the union fought to get the best deal collectively for their workers, but you have to have rocks in your head if you think people like my father felt entitled. they felt lucky to have a job.

as for finding another job... you highlight my point! it's pretty fucking difficult to find another job when after 20 years the only thing you're qualified to do is work in a general motors factory, particularly when your supporting a family. if my dad had the luxury of "finding another job", don't you think he would?

again, im not defending gm, the uaw, or any of the system as whole, i'm simply highlighting the fact that maybe the situation is a bit more nuanced than you understand.

"it's pretty fucking difficult to find another job when after 20 years the only thing you're qualified to do is work in a general motors factory"

I've always had a problem with this argument. If you work 40 hours a week, you've easily got time in 20 years to do anything you'd like to do -- including becoming a brain surgeon.

I'm honestly not trying to be cold about it, but the rest of us live in a world, especially in IT, where you have to keep learning new skills in order to survive. I'm very sad that people thought that GM would last forever and that they could simply get trained in one skill and have it last a lifetime. But those days are over. They've been over for a long, long time.

Lots of great comments here, but not this one: you cannot work 40 hrs/week, have a family, and become a brain surgeon in your spare time. I have 5 doctors in my immediate family and know a bunch more in medical school, and you have no idea what you're talking about.

That being said, I'm with you about needing to learn new skills. The days of the company man are over, and in our new world you need to have a set of skills and competencies that you can take where needed. But can you imagine how hard and scary it would be for someone who has worked in the same job for 40 years to try and do something new?

I know someone who decided to became a Doctor at 30 (no kids or wife). He did not go to a top med school but he graduated without debt and works in the ER. Now he has a wife, but no kids and works part time so he could become a brain surgeon. It's cheep to live a lower middle class existence and working full time in the summer you can make a lot of money to live off of the rest of the year. The idea that you need to go to a top med school and then as soon as you become a doctor you start driving a BMW is why most of his coworkers are poor and he has a nice savings.

My brother was the first person (ever) to go an offshore med school and then do his residency at Mass General (the Harvard hospital). So yeah, definitely don't need a top med school. And doing that at 30 (or 25 or 40) is awesome.

But a family is the biggest commitment/obligation you can have - [almost] impossible to deal with wife/kids/work/med school concurrently.

We're all free agents. It's a lot of fun.

You're right, it is difficult. But where your Dad is at (the same place my Dad was at) is nothing more than the product of their own decisions. Is it anyone's fault but your Dad's that he's only qualified to work in a factory? Is it anyone's fault but my Dad's that he didn't learn about computers even though he saw them appearing everywhere?

My Dad was able to learn some new skills and eventually land on his feet after being unemployed for quite some time. Hopefully your Dad is able to do the same.

sure, no one is entitled to a job. that's not my point at all. things change and jobs change. what I was trying to explain is why my dad would travel 100mi to get to work. yeah sure, he could have went to med school or something, but he had a family to support and nearing retirement that was his best option. i feel it's pretty arrogant to even make a statement, "why did he just find another job". sure he could have, but i think just as my dad did, most people make rational choices given their situation.

to clear things up also, this is past tense. my dad retired. the greatest concern to me is GM not living up to their commitment to him in retirement benefits.

Look, 25$/hour + Free heath care + Vacation + Retirement is way better than most Americans get today. I knew someone supporting a wife and 2 kids making 7.25$/hour + a lot of overtime working as a cook at Denny's and going to collage at the same time. That's America, sure he worked all the time and had no life but now he has a good job and if he was in a dieing industry he would do it again.

Unions have done great things to bring heath care and a living wage to most americans but they kept pushing and over time they have distroyed many companies. Management was doing the same thing and they shorted the pension program etc but these companies are dieing and assuming they are going to keep just as many people employed long term is stupid. Capitalism creates efficiency by destroying jobs, when one welder can do the work of 4 you lay off the redundant people and move on.

PS: Saying they pay 2k per car in pension benefits is silly, if they made twice as many cars their pension benefits don't go up. Yes, they have huge unfunded liabilities but if they made coffee they would still have that same costs. Fixing pension cost's is all about growth not cutting benefits.

I understand. But again the situation is just what he created for himself (and what my Dad created for himself). Everything - the wife, the kids, the car, the house (if applicable) - those were his decisions and my Dad's decisions.

People need to be accountable for their actions and realize that your current state is no one's fault (or achievement) but your own.

Part of the problem is, that the higher you force the wage, the fewer employees a company can employ. So, when unions push wages (and pensions) too high, it prevents the companies from hiring as many employees. In the case of UAW and GM, it went so far that GM was forced to close down factories and many UAW workers lost their jobs as a result.

A better way to improve wages and income for workers is to improve their productivity, that is, their subjective worth in relation to the employer, as wages tend to naturally approach this value. Tis is best done by increasing the quantity and quality available to the workers. Effectively this means increasing innovation, which GM and Ford have not been able to provide for years. UAW is part of the problem here as well.

Not that unions are all bad, workers should have a negotiating body in order to prevent abuse by employers, but I think that in this case they are part of the problem.

I'm in my mid-40s and in IT and have the same feeling. Good luck finding something in this economy no matter what industry.

Every contract has two sides, so I don't see why the UAW should be singled out for blame here. The management must have believed that their contract with the auto workers would still leave them enough cash to make a profit--otherwise they never would have signed the contract in the first place!

No, I'm quite sure they signed under duress - it was sign or a strike. Usually contracts made under duress are invalid, but not when it's a union.

What makes it worse is that even the employees were under duress - even if they wanted to work, and were not interested in a strike, they couldn't.

The threat of a strike is not duress. "Accept these terms or we won't work for you" is not that different from "accept these terms or we won't sell you steel".

Companies in other unionized industries have pushed unions to accept significant concessions. If the Big Three management had really believed that accepting the UAW's last offer was going to destroy their business, then they were irresponsible not to endure a strike in order to break the union.

I'm disgusted as well because this is yet another manifestation of elitist resentment against systems in place that assist the middle and lower classes.

Mythical "Welfare Queen," meet the mythical "UAW King."

It really disgusts me that this comment has been upmodded so much. it reeks of overgeneralization, ignorance, and hyperbole. it's very easy to sit on your high horse and talk about hypothetical denny's waitresses, but a little harder when this actually effects you and your loved ones.

Very true. The dangers many Americans face as a result of all this are real, as are the hardships that prompted folks to adopt these broken systems in the first place. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are very serious problems with the system and that the hardships could be made much worse if they are not addressed.

American hardships are nothing compared to third world countries' hardships.

That's why I donate my money to the real poor (the people who don't know if they're going to be alive on a day to day basis) not the American poor.

Yeah lots of people have tough lives here, but they're still in the top 5% of the world's population.

Yeah lots of people have tough lives here, but they're still in the top 5% of the world's population.

Or, we could say: "Yeah people here are in the top 5% of the world's population, but many people still do have tough lives."

You seem to have missed my point. This discussion is not about the rest of the world but about the situation regarding the 'Big 3,' the UAW, and the impending bailout for the American auto industry. When discussing such things, you deal with people who are effected by them. As far as I know, most of the third world will not be greatly affected by the auto bailout.

More to the point, I'm not advocating welfare. I'm merely intimating that I understand that others can experience hardship, but that it's not right to use that as an excuse to perpetuate bad policies.

The discussion (not between you and I) but on the rest of the thread reeks of self entitlement and a lack of accountability. My comment wasn't aimed just at your point, but rather the people who think they're entitled to things they haven't earned and who fail to keep things in perspective when facing challenges.

I agree that the current Mother Government system is completely fucked, however. The bailout, because of financial markets, microloans, commercial paper, free markets and trade will affect almost every one. Orders of magnitude will vary.

LOL, you live in America. Of course people feel entitled; they're educated that way. At least it's not Sweden.

Anyway, the bailout most directly affects the Us Auto Industry and it's workers, So I think it makes sense to consider their needs first.

Your words are like my mother telling me I should eat my toast because there are starving children in China. Sure I should be grateful to have food to eat, but what does this have to do with the Chinese? Is this their toast? Can we give it to them?

It's one thing to tell folks that they have it good and they should stop complaining; It's another to do so and then turn around and spend the money that they were demanding on a private jet or new summer home. Right or wrong, that's how auto-workers see it and unless you really are worse off than they are, you should at least show that you emphasize with their condition before telling them what to do. Otherwise, you'll just reinforce that sense of entitlement.

My point is this: "I understand, but you'll have to suck it up." goes further than "Suck it up."

My words would only be like that if you thought you were entitled to your toast every single day of your life. ;)