So what's your argument, Thom? Do you believe that a status quo of lifestyle should be given to you? Do you believe these companies should not be concerned with their bottom line so that they can simply exist and avoid putting even more people out of work?
You cannot talk to me about layoffs. I've seen more than a few of them within the large corporations I've worked for: Times Mirror, Time Warner/AOL, to name two. I will allow that initially it is not fair for these people to lose their jobs. However, most of whom I know who have lost their jobs - just average people - have moved on. They have diversified. They have taken responsibility for themselves.
Blaming big business and the government is such a tired argument that it goes in one ear and out the other with me. Detroit is dead and Silicon Valley should follow suit. Real estate "up there" has slowed, because no one has any money to buy real estate. Down in So. Cal., it's fine and getting better.
Zero-percent financing, etc., for new cars - is just good business, don't you think?
And as to the ones who still have money because they didn't get suckered into 1) 401Ks (should have taken "responsibility" and diversified themselves - never trust anyone with all your eggs); 2) stock options from ridiculous dot.com pipe dreams that any reasonably thinking person would laugh at; or 3) think as did the greedy middle income Joe Schmoe who believed he could mosey up to a Rockerfeller's level... are who now buy new cars at zero-percent financing, and keep a successful American auto industry afloat with newer models.
The economy is getting better. It's the fake players, day traders, and those who think they can get something for nothing, who have fallen off the economic scope.
And just so you know, yes, I too bought into all that dot.com crap (the ones who are the biggest economic complainers now) in the mid to late 90s. But I soon found no substance in the product. A keyword in investments should be "tangibility." What you can see, touch, eat, drink, or pour into your Porsche, is what makes a for a better investment than the half-baked products of the so-called and dearly departed "new economy," that was in itself nothing more than a catch-phrase, yet succeeded in destroying the U.S. economy -- at least for a time.
Of course nothing I say here admonishes Bush. I don't think the war is as just as others, and yet I can understand aspects of it. Personal gain is one, a vendetta is another, a territorial threat is just one more. All his ducks are pretty much lined up for this one. If he's nailed for one option as to his attack on Iraq, he can easily go to another.
He's like the 49ers of the Steve Young era - Rathman, Rice and Taylor offered a lot of weapons to advance the team to the end zone.
Gotta' run now...
