Somewhere in this thread, somebody quotes 178,000 current UAW jobs. During Ronald Reagan's presidency, the total of US Shipyard workers was at least that if not more. The majority of those workers belonged to a union called UMSWA. The Reagan administration tried mightily to push through congress legislation aimed at keeping American Shipyards competative with foreign yards. At best, they were able to offer some subsidies to American companies that had their ships built in the USA and also President Reagan wanted a very large Navy fleet. But after Reagan left office, all effort to retain America's ability to build ships ceased. UMSWA went out of business and what few shipyard jobs there are left in the USA are primarily non-union or lumped in with other unions. The point being, the demise of the major shipyard union did nothing to preserve jobs. What galls me is that well over 150,000 jobs were lost in the ensuing years and nobody cared. There are less than 30,000 shipbuilders in our nation as I write this. That's the cost of a free market economy. And you know, I agree. If the USA is to be a true free market economy business has to sink or swim on it's own. Our government cannot go around Nationalising corporate America or we cease to become what we are. But yet we find ourselves engaged in a level of corporate socialism unprecedented in the history of our nation. Even during the great depression, the central government's efforts did not fall to bailing out failing businesses, but rather to create government entities such as the WPA and the CCC aimed at creating jobs while the private sector made whatever corrections were needed and began to reivive. Many of our nations greatest infrastructure projects came about with WPA and CCC workers. The media and the politicians have done a great job of diverting our attention from the true crisis we find ourselves in at this time. Are we truly a free nation or we to become a socialist nation. Are we to move into the future using the business/government model of Japan, Taiwan and Korea as our guide ? It is not taxpayer dollars being spent here my friends it is our very soul as a nation.
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