Of course Boeing is not serious about building planes here. They can't wait to get out of here. What makes you think they had any interest in staying? Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit were all abandoned by manufacturers--what makes anyone think Seattle is special? This is not a victory for anyone except the hedge fund managers that buy and sell Boeing stock.

Fuck Boeing AND their bought and paid for whore, Jay Inslee.

Fuck Jim McNerney and his evil Chicago-boy henchmen. UnChristian, Anti-American scum.

http://www1.salary.com/BOEING-CO-Executi…

Look, Boeing is going to pull out of here sooner or later no matter what anyone does. They might as well just get it over with and stop with all the dicking around. Maybe we can get Airbus to buy their factories here.

Goldy, have you ever taken a basic accounting class, a finance class... anything? Have you ever run a lemonade stand? Put together a budget? Do you know what you're talking about at all re: business, or have you simply mastered the gimmick of sprinkling yer big blocks of black and white nothing with click-bait: "fuck" and "suicide"? Slog -- please stop trying to cover business.

I'm sure Goldy led the charge to unionize The Stranger's workforce and keep the interns at part-time-level hours.

The only fiscally responsible choice for Boeing is to build the 777x here - highly skilled workforce with proven success, Boeing profits are high, and they just got the best tax break in the nation. The Machinists wouldn't sell out young workers and future workers - this contract proposal was terrible. The Machinists stood up for the middle class. We owe them our support and gratitude.

@5 Actually, I've worked in the telecommunications, software, and logistics industries, and started and ran my own software publishing company. Wasn't a huge business, but we did a few hundred thousand dollars of annual sales at our peak. Not that you need to be a businessman to write about business any more than you need to be an athlete to write about sports. So, you know, you can just shut the fuck up.

Sadly inevitable when the same crew that screwed McDonnell Douglas into the ground managed to take the helm at Boeing. They'll slowly go the way of GM, all the while laying the blame at the foot of the workforce for their screw ups.

People seem to be forgetting that Boeing is now a Chicago based subsidiary of McDonald Douglas. Corporate Boeing doesn't give a shit about us any more so don't expect any loyalty to our region.

If Boeing leaves it will also leave a skilled workforce.

I wonder if there are any other aircraft manufacturers which might be willing to locate a production line here?

I mean if Boeing can move in SC why can't some other XYZ aircraft maker come here to WA?

Don't forget folks, we're dealing with a company that moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, and then opened up an entirely new production facility in South Carolina.

So I wouldn't bet very much that they won't move the 777X production to S. Carolina also…. I'm a big union supporter, but the machinists have to know they are playing with fire.

If matching 401Ks and stock grants are good for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon employees they should be good enough for Boeing employees. In addition, they can be rolled over to managed annuity IRAs and are far more lucrative for intelligent employees (like machinists) who what a better retirement. I know, financial planning can be a bore - so get off the couch and stop your belly aching. Pensions are so yester-century!

Very proud of them. It can't have been easy to forgo the $10k bait. All the best to the Machinists of Boeing, finest in the world,

@16, you idiot, have you noticed the Boeing stock price lately?

@7 "The Machinists stood up for the middle class. We owe them our support and gratitude."

I'm not in a union, but I too thank the Boeing union here. The unions gave us the 40 hr week and a host of other labor rights and standards we consider the foundation of a modern stable society for the United States.

Jerks like these Boeing CEOs will gamble the well being of their own companies to try to crush unions because their ideological loyalties completely trump any loyalty they have to a long term stable successful United States economy and society, let alone to the long term good of the world community.

I love the unions too but I'm sure our friends in South Carolina are very, very happy with the news that they'll be hosting a lot more jobs very soon. "Fuck you" hasn't been a very good strategy for American workers for several decades now, and I'm not sure why we think this one will turn out differently.

I would say vote for the offer if McNerney would agree to take a 1% salary increase every other year.

Jimbo, you've got to be kidding! ...while you & your fellow good-ol-boys fatten up on your stock options & your gigantic multi-million-dollar bonuses, you're asking your most talented workers to give back almost everything they've worked hard for. Your GE-born treachery serves you well, until reality sets in. Did you not learn anyting from your 787 outsourcing fiascos? Maybe it's because the Boeing inbred board did not penalize you at all for your toxic decisions ...so now you think you can keep skating & continue making irresponsible decisions about Boeing's future. One of these days it's gonna come back to haunt you ...if there's any justice in this world. [...smirks from Jimbo in his Chicago ivory tower...]

Here's a clue, Jimbo: Boeing is *not* you, or your fellow inbred board members ...Boeing *is* its talented workers, who have served far longer & far more capably than you or any other GE-trained phony. Wake up before you inflict any more damage on this great company ...and before you find yourself & your arrogant attitude booted out.

All this labor/anti-labor squabbling and everybody ignores that the machinists' jobs will be done by robots in less than a generation. Manufacturing jobs are, as a whole, dinosaurs. The broad discussion needs to be about implementation of basic income to buffer the effects of automation and post-scarcity.

I saw Inslees interview on Komo last night at 11pm. He could give a fuck less about the union losing their pensions, etc. The only thing he cared about was the deal...period. Most on this forum are always calling for wage earners to pay more taxes, while the state pisses away vast billions on tax breaks. If we collected what was fair and due, we wouldn't need more taxes. Hey, were #1 on tax breaks...hooray!

#1

No wage earning workingman would want to live in Washington where houses are still insanely expensive.

In North Charleston, Carolina, you can get this:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7809-S…

For Sale: $163,970
Bedrooms:4 beds
Bathrooms:2 baths
Single Family:1,726 sq ft
Lot:8,276 sqft
Year Built:2004

401k's give much better independence vs. a pension. I would probably not take a job that offered a pension and no 401k, but how to have both at a company without creating 2 classes of employee is a difficult problem.

#28

Most companies have suspended matching donations to 401ks. So at that point they are just tax free savings, same as an IRA, which you can set up at your local bank.

Airbus can move a production line to Washington State.

Not making light that Boeing may leave some of its work.

But it's not the end of the world and there may/will be other manufacturers to be happy to establish itself here.

#30

LOL...dream on!

It was the European auto manufacturers who established the South as a manufacturing base because of lower wages.

And those lower wages, by the way, buy the working people more for the buck. Also, since it's warmer, they can spend less for heating oil, and so on.

@29 IRA contribution limits are too small to save enough by retirement, even if I started very young, at least for me. My partner and I work for different companies and they both still match. Both of us have moved companies a few times and taken our 401k with us.

@11 If Boeing leaves it will also leave a skilled workforce.

This is really the crux of it all. The Germans have remained quite productive (read: profitable) with an expensive, educated (unionized with lots of benefits) work force.

The question is whether "cheapest we can get our hands on" is ultimately more profitable - no doubt Wall St. cares only about next quarter, so who cares if the junk falls apart in 18 months, let's move production to the lowest cost area/labor (someplace down south where labor is weak and therefore cheap). But what does this do to Boeing down the road? Remember all the issues around the Dreamliner batteries? How quickly people forget.

Airliners are not cheap cars, and Boeing will be punished horribly by Wall St. if quality issues ensue when they move to low-labor-cost locations. Of course, no guarantee they won't do this anyway, blow up the company and escape with a golden parachute.

@28 - 401ks offer better portability, sure, but you're a fool if you think defined-contribution equal or exceed defined-benefit plans. One good smack from the market and you're hammered. Ask the British who "privatized" their entire National Pension system and replaced it with 401k-like packages. Everything is just rosy as long as there is a net inflow of dollars (kinda like a pension!) into the market on a macro scale. That value goes up and up with no real relation to earnings or GDP. The minute the outflows pick up, boom goes your 401k.

You are better off buying your own private "pension" aka ins. annuity, or T-bills, and the cost of matching what defined benefit plans ultimately pay out is substantially greater than what 401k matching contributions approach.

@30 - yes, the thing is, despite >150 years of attempting to be the "low cost producer" and attracting jobs with cheap labor, the south continues to trail the north and west substantially in almost all measures. Those weak labor protections are great for corporate interests and profitability, but it doesn't "trickle down".

#35

No one says you have to stick your 401k money in a stock-based fund, although if you do nothing you will be thrown into one typically.

You can apportion some or all of your money into a stable value fund. At that point you'd get less growth, but you would not be subject to big losses and you still get tax free savings.

@36 - many many many 401ks do not offer you the option to control and invest your own money. Some do, and they are preferable. Most don't.

Even then: most investment vehicles available to retail investors - "stable value funds" (what is that anyway? A mix of Bonds and Equities?) and the rest all charge (skim) a percentage of your earnings to "manage" your money for you. Study after study after study shows these "managed" funds do no better in the aggregate over longer periods than the famous random darts thrown by monkeys...that is: they simply track the market. An unmanaged market index fund is about as "safe" and good a return as you're likely to get, and it seldom really outpaces inflation. TIPS from the treasury is a safe bet, and may actually outperform the market.

Regardless, the lifetime benefits of defined contribution plans are a dramatic and substantial cut from the old school defined benefit programs. They are effectively therefore a pay cut because they reduce your lifetime compensation.

Pretending you're gonna "get your money away from the government" and day-trade your way to riches is a fools bet and hopium. Fortunately, we haven't gone off the deep end like the UK and "privatized" SSI. Take a look at the UK: this ideological experiment has actually been tried, for realsies, in the real world. And it failed. Hugely.

@35: One good smack and your hammered? You said? Not really. The stock market is a great long term investment. Those that didn't panic and sell their stocks in 2008 saw it all come back and are better than those who transferred everything into bonds and other assets. Also, in a 401K (and later IRA) you can choose your level of risk to suit your preference.

I heard on KIRO radio last night a letter by someone who purported to know about the deal and he said that the rejection wouldn't solely be about the pensions and rising costs and lower pay but also about how even though Boeing would commit to building the 777X in WA it wouldn't commit to using their own staff. It left the door wide open to building the 777X using subcontractors. If that's true then why is the media completely ignoring that fact?

What would really be great is if the South Carolina workers stood up for their NW brothers and told Boeing "Nah, we don't like your greedy ways. We don't want to work for someone like McKerney that sucks Satan's cock. Fuck you Boeing!"

But that won't happen.

"I've worked in the... logistics industries"

Clearly you learned nothing there.

@38: The old school benefit programs are not coming back as they're unaffordable by companies and municipalities. That's the simple reality.

@39 - tell it to the people who were getting ready to start using their 401ks and IRAs in 2008. Timing is everything:

http://www.simplestockinvesting.com/imag…

1990-2000 was the "irrational exuberance" of the dot-bomb bubble AND the explosion of the 401K.

The only reason a 401k is better than a pension is management can't under-fund it and can't raid it. But we're gonna see a lot more boomers working much longer and living poorer than their parents did in retirement.

In theory, employees of a business should be able to expect the following, "If things are tough for the company, you will have to make sacrifices. If things are going well, you will benefit." Boeing's offer indicates they feel the arrangement should be adversarial at all times, that there is NO circumstance under which employees should expect anything other than a downward trajectory in wages and benefits.

The backdrop to this is that all of Boeing's efforts to outsource production and manufacturing have been disastrous. Endless delays in Dreamliner production, combustible batteries, inferior production speeds and quality from factories built in the south, etc. So Boeing, having told their employees that at no point in the future should they expect their fortunes to improve (even as Boeing continues to make obscene profits) and has seen attempts to undermine or weaken the unions fall flat, now expects its employees to give up wages and the ability to retire for ????

To quote Anthony McAuliffe, when the Nazi's demanded his surrender during the Battle of the Bulge, "NUTS!"

@43 - yes, I know they aren't coming back; I disagree as to why - they are/were perfectly affordable, but you had to actually follow the actuarial demands. They are in crisis because they were underfunded for years and years.

I take it that you are conceding, with your "it's irrelevant which is better, they aren't coming back" argument, that indeed, they were superior plans?

@38 Who said day trade? I Invest as much as I can, in broad all market index funds with very little overhead (load). I re-balance my investments 1 time a year, and pretty much ignore the daily market variations. I think I could safely survive a 40% downturn or 20 year bear market and still have a retirement income equal to my current income + inflation. As much as I distrust pensions, I am in favor of increasing Social Security.

Actually, @48 has a good point.

If Boeing leaves we'll replace them with high speed trains made here, and end the tax-subsidized airplane industry and the CEO outsourcers.

Whenever this topic comes up I tell my Boeing union story because it is an object lesson regarding the importance of unions and the perfidy of corporations, specifically in this case Boeing.
Boeing security covers gates and lobbies as secure access points. Years ago both the gates and lobbies were staffed by Boeing employees. The armed guards at the gates unionized and the lobby personnel were talked out of joining them. Now all the lobbies are staffed by contractors who make a third of what the position formally paid and without health benefits or vacation as well. When Boeing closes at Christmas the lobby personnel, tasked with the same level of responsibility to protect Boeing property and assets as the armed guards at the gates, are afforded the privilege of two weeks without pay. Fuck Boeing and their Union busting, and good for the machinists for not saying “I’ve got mine, screw the people coming after me.”

@37 I know trying to educate a troll is about as effective as pissing into the wind, but 737 fuselages are manufactured in Kansas by Sprint Aerospace. So, fuck off.

@46: Well, sure, who wouldn't enjoy those ol' GM-style pensions? But I look forward, not backward.

@50: Security guards generally make less than skilled workers. Receptionists generally make less money than security guards. Busboys generally make less than receptionists. That's why companies subcontract so that they can save money on staffing that is not their core business so that they can invest and grow their company. Your union sob story is no different than a tea party crazy wanting to succeed from the union - both refuse to accept the reality of the marketplace and what it takes to run a business.

Corporation, n. an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

@45 sums up the problem. The capital class and the labor class are becoming more and more adversarial, as the record breaking levels of inequity are considered insufficient by the capitalists.

@51: Hello Husband! I miss you. Care to take a stab at schooling raindrop?
@52: Boeing security are not mall cops, and Boeing lobby personnel are not receptionists. They are responsible for protecting proprietary sites and military as well as commercial programs. You want to pay some one 17$ an hour with no benefits to secure design specs for the Joint Strike fighter or F-22? Then you get what you pay for.

@12/22:

You mean the workers in North Charleston who have been barely able to meet HALF their anticipated production quota - and aren't expected to do so for another TWO YEARS? The same ones who are also on the verge of unionizing their plant?

Yeah, because that worked out soooo well for McNerny & Co...

@52: You want another example? One that relates to Boeing’s “core business”? In 2010 Boeing laid off pretty much their whole IT division. Skilled workers integral to every aspect of Boeing’s core business from design to support. An entire building full of people. But wait! They offered every single one of those employees the “opportunity” to continue doing their jobs as contractors for less money and no benefits. That’s not investing in your company’s growth. That’s fucking with the actual human assets that make your company work to give your stock price a bump.
Fuck them.

@56: IT is integral to every business, but where it makes sense to subcontract it out they should do it.
I don't discount that losing a great job and having to take steps down is a very trying experience - I've been through it myself. But that's what we do, that's what we have to do. We can't continue to think that we can cement companies into business models that don't work for them. The primary function of a business is to grow, not just to hire employees. Roll with the punches. Get a better job. Study harder. Don't have another kid. All that comes into play.

@57: These were people doing the exact same job on Monday that they had done on Friday designing software that make the air planes go, that keep them in the air. Highly skilled. Highly educated. They already had "worked harder" and "gone to school". And Boeing still wanted them and needed those skills. They just didn't want to pay for it.

Call Airbus.
Tell them that they might have an opportunity.

The primary function of a business is to grow, not just to hire employees. Roll with the punches. Get a better job. Study harder. Don't have another kid. All that comes into play.

Right, because the previous model/iteration was sooo unprofitable and uncompetitive. You proles better work harder/faster to make sure the Rentier Class in London and NYC get their quarterly tribute increase!

@26

You don't know what you're talking about. I was an assembler at Boeing years ago. The job not only requires familiarity with blueprints, standards, etc which can be taught in the classroom, it requires the skill of manual dexterity, or "touch" with tools and a certain kind of common sense that can only come with time. Skills like carefully fitting parts together so there are no out-of-spec gaps, not pushing on the drill too hard or making a proper bucktail on a rivet, and having an intuitive understanding of WHY that's important. It's a LOT harder than it sounds, especially when you consider the possibility of ruining a $50,000 part. The stresses on airframe skin and structures in flight are astronomical and you can't. get. that. wrong.

I joined the company in 1996 when they were planning to double the production rate of 737s and they were hiring new workers by the thousands. The learning curve was steep and there was a lot of parts damaged and a lot of rework done. I personally walked on one of the wing spoilers and bent it on my second day; I just didn't know any better.

Speaking of spoilers, I was walking by a plane one day and I saw a worker who appeared to be blending out a scratch with a spoon file. A deep enough scratch can become a fatigue point and it's normally done on the skin, but she was doing it on something inside the flap track. I had enough experience by that time to know something was wrong about that so I climbed up the ladder and asked her what she was doing. She told me that she put a nick on a tube and she was blending it out. I told her that the tube was a 3000 psi hydraulic line that actuates the spoilers and she just put a weak spot in it. It would have failed in flight or upon landing and having the right spoiler up and the left one down could have caused severe control issues. So I told her she now had to replace the tube which ran half the length of the wing. THAT'S why you need EXPERIENCED people in your workforce.

The worst damage I saw was when the nose gear on a 737 collapsed and the nose crashed to the ground because a newbie forgot to put the lock pin in and a tug driver pulled it out from under the plane with a tow bar. That mistake cost the company around $2 million in repairs to the plane, hundreds of man hours lost and the customer probably got a steep discount on that one. Oh, and the radome crashed down on the tug, missing the driver by mere inches.

The result of the well-thought out plan to double the production rate within a few months was an unmitigated disaster, with planes being completed on the apron outside the assembly building out in the rain by the lake because suppliers were having the same troubles doubling THEIR production rates. I'm not surprised to hear about the troubles in North Carolina.

Why they don't teach this in business school is baffling to me, but as some other poster said, ideology has trumped common sense in seemingly all facets of American business. Executives go from one ivory tower (MBA program) to another (executive suite) without any concept of what they're doing, and other ivory tower dwellers (Wall Street) reward them handsomely for it.

I was there for the McDonnell Douglas-Boeing anschluss, and I was dumbfounded that the McD management was taking over Boeing Commercial Airplanes! Everything I read about McD was that their commercial side was dysfunctional and failing and I thought Boeing was buying them for their successful military division and would close down their commercial side. How the holy hell did McD buy Boeing with Boeing's own money?

And one more thing raindrop. Your "don't have another kid" comment. What the fuck were all those laid off IT folks supposed to do with the children they already had? Eat them? Is it really your suggestion that having a family is something that not just the poor, but college educated, middle class people with valuable skill sets better not even consider, since companies need to grow?
What the ever loving fuck raindrop.

@57 -
"I don't discount that losing a great job and having to take steps down is a very trying experience - I've been through it myself. But that's what we do, that's what we have to do."

How does going through such an experience mean that's the way it should be for everyone? Or that it's even right to do to your workforce in the first place? And why are you so willing to accept the bottom of the barrel scraps that profit making global multi-billion dollar corporation are dishing out? Why are you acting as an apologist for them?

"We can't continue to think that we can cement companies into business models that don't work for them.

So you believe Boeing wouldn't be profitable otherwise? I'd love to see how you do the math on that one.

One of your fundamental tenants seems to be that rich people should be able to be even richer, that corporations should be able to make even more profit (to make rich people richer), and that the rest of us should just deal with it because those rich people somehow deserve to be even richer because they're already rich. You know, because reasons.

In summary, your philosophy seems to be let the rich get richer with a splash of "please sir, may I have another?"

@63 -
What the ever loving fuck raindrop.

This.

@62:

"How the holy hell did McD buy Boeing with Boeing's own money?"

That, my friend, is the $64 billion-dollar question. Why the Boeing BoD and shareholders didn't demand the summary resignation of every top excec at McD-D, why they instead chose to put them, a management group that had proven so collectively incompetent as to invite a hostile takeover in the first place, on the board and in the corner offices, is, simply put, one of the greatest corporate blunders in the history of Capitalism.

It may have taken 15 or so years to come to full fruition, but the stockholders, in their relentless pursuit of quarterly profit over a quality product, seem hell-bent on driving the company into the ground, which is just inconceivable to me. Of what value will their holdings be when dozens of already frustrated customers get tired of the endless delays and excuses from management and start cancelling their orders in favor of the competition, driving literally billions of dollars worth of income out of the company? You simply can't fire enough workers, regardless of where they're located, to make up for that sort of thing, and still expect to remain in business.

@12,

Acquiescing hasn't helped either. What do you propose workers do to ensure that they're being paid what they're worth?

@59: Be consistent now. We were talking about IT. IT does not typically involve the engineering of aerodynamics other than accessing its data.

@63: Okay, you're right on that. Mea culpa.

@64: I'm a realist. What you see as serfdom to the evil corporations I see as the flexibility to choose my own path. I can't really do justice in a short answer to your questions - but let me put it this way and you've heard it before: when one door closes, another door opens.

@68 - I think one can have flexibility and stability while also being compensated fairly for the work that you do. And I can speak from experience that a company that values my growth and experience secures my loyalty far more than one who doesn't and that definitely has an impact on my productivity and their bottom line. I think too many companies have forgotten that in their rush to the bottom. It really doesn't have to be an either/or scenario.

To quote Tom Hardy's character Eames from Inception, "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."

@69,

I'm going to argue that it's very difficult, near impossible, to have flexibility and stability without being compensated for the work that we do.

It makes me think of the common excuses for why companies "can't" invest in their employees. The most cited reason is because, once they've trained their employees up, those employees will ditch them for a better paid job. So, that's the excuse for why companies won't so much as call back an applicant who's not exactly what they're looking for. Meanwhile, those companies are determined to lowball those perfect employees with shitty compensation and benefits and no job stability. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you want a perfectly skilled and trained employee who doesn't give a shit if you lay them off in twelve months, you better pony up some serious cash.

@68: You really have no idea how much software is involved in flying a commercial airplane do you, let alone testing it. Your comment is meaningless, and doges the point that these were highly trained people whose skills were integral to the production of Boeing aircraft. Boeing still wanted and needed those skills. They just didn’t want to pay on Monday what they had paid for them the previous Friday.

@66 - The mantra that these corporations are somehow more efficient and rational is ludicrous because people, including me, have had YEARS of first hand experience seeing this drive to the bottom while simultaneously watching the same players handsomely reward themselves for their incompetence while saying fuck you to everyone else.

Why should I believe that the free market is all sunshine and puppies when it's been pretty much a constant thunderstorm and my cat is dead? Maybe that's why we elect socialists now and unions balk at giving up even more to people who really don't give a shit because it rarely (if ever) impacts their own individual bottom line.

@raindrop:
One door closes and another one opens eh?
These IT people were shoved out of one door and then invited to crawl back into the same fucking building through a doggie door. Honest to god, the same building, the same desks, everything. Except for less money and no benefits.
Fuck. That.

@69: I agree with all of that - who doesn't want greater compensation? But it seems you want some revolutionary change like the Occupy movement. That's silly. I adapt. I'm making about ~15K less that my top salary but I'm also 25 lbs. lighter and happier.
It makes no sense to me to sulk about money I don't have.

@73: Yes, that is pretty awful.

@74 - Good for you for making lemonade out of lemons. I'm not saying you can't adapt and I'm not saying that being in a lesser stress environment is bad either. But let me ask you, if you'd had a choice in the matter, would you have voluntarily left that position? I'm not trying to be snarky here, I'm honestly curious.

And it's not about sulking about money you don't have, that's a red herring. What I'm talking about is not being fucked over. Look, I've said this before, I'm a huge fan of profit and I'm literally one of the people from the bottom who've made it to the rungs of the upper middle class through my own sweat, drive, and determination. And even with all that, I recognize that what has happened to the middle class is a travesty. What we as a society have allowed these companies (and the tiny percentage of people who control them) to get away with at the expense of nearly everyone else is a travesty and I refuse to believe it has to be that way.

I believe in the American Dream because I've lived it and I see a nation and the companies it has nurtured not only turn it's back on that dream, but literally squash it down for no reason other than money and the fact that they can. I have immense respect for this nation and what it can do, but I also believe that pulling the ladder up once you're on an upwardly mobile track is naïve at best and traitorous at worst. It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. People and companies should invest in the nation that made them (or their parents in the case of the Waltons for instance) such an incredible success, and tough fucking shit if they don't want to. Trust me, they'll still be incredibly rich and powerful even with a larger share of their money going to charities and/or taxes.

Again, you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger. We're Americans; it's what we do. Let's not kill it off for everyone else.

@76: To answer your question, No. It was a slap in the face - but it was also a reduction in force due to the ramifications of the 2008 crash.
How do we bring the middle class back? Even if we wanted to would unionization and pensions and a very high income tax (75%) bring it back? Could we replicate the economy of the 1950's today? CEO caps? More regulation?
I don't know. But I would be suspect of old policies.

@77 - I appreciate your candor and honesty. I also share your suspicion of old policies. As an example, airline deregulation isn't perfect, but it's so much better than the heavy regulation it had prior to. What I hope is that we've learned enough in both directions that we can find a middle ground.

The ACA is a good example of that I think. For profit insurance companies will still make a profit, but it won't be by canceling policies retroactively or denying someone for their pre-existing conditions. The insurance industry wouldn't do the right thing on their own, so government had to step in to ensure that they did. I think that's a good policy in general to have as well as a lesson to be learned; make all the money you want (yay profit!) but don't fuck people over in the process. It won't be perfect, but if the alternative is far worse, I think I can live with that.

Thanks for the debate today and I hope you have a good evening.

@Pridge Wessea, *clap, clap, clap, clap* H/T.