According to the linked page, the higher figures come from combining the wages with the average pension payout to retirees. (In short, it’s BS. Imagine if someone said your wage was the sum of your hourly gross plus what the company is paying retirees.)

Also, the article says that pensions were taken away from the automakers — there was a big payout, and now the unions manage the pensions. So that number is even more BS.

Auto companies need to adapt. It’s not the UAW causing these companies to fail.

What the UAW has done, for years, that is unfair, is preserve retirement benefits by selling out the new members. They negotiate two-tier pay scales so the new people get paid less than the veteran workers. So, even those complaints about high wages is ringing hollow — as the workforce ages out, the new workers are coming in to earn less… and basically pay for the retirees.

the UAW is just receiving a “living wage”…

geez I wish I could make as much as some jackass bolting a fender on a car but I was too lazy and incompetent so I just settled for a Master’s degree instead.

THEY EARN EVERY PENNY!!!

I agree with you about the student loans because that’s an issue that hits close to home. I have a lot of student loan debt obtained to fund a law school degree.

You see, some college degrees are worthwhile and some are worthless. I know people with college degrees who learned engineering, accounting, law, medicine, biology, business, etc and they have good jobs making good money, and no amount of experience would satisfy the necessity for a degree. College teaches the basics and the work experiences builds on that.

On the other hand I have friends with liberal arts degress who are customer service associates and shelf stockers. They were lazy and unskilled to begin with and college was just four years of dope smoking and binge drinking and now they’re paying for it.

The real issue is that college has gotten VERY EXPENSIVE. My law school was $30k A YEAR. My boss graduated from Northwestern 35ish years ago and it was $3,000 a year.

The reason education has gotten expensive is student loans. Think about student loans for a second….large sums of money given to people with little or no credit history, expected to be paid back over 30 years, some with variable interest rates, and when it comes time to repay them after graduation, the borrower has little disposible income. Sounds like a textbook subprime mortgage to me. What’s even more insidious is that they also have the option arm neg am provision too. If you graduate from school and can’t make the payments then you can pay a teaser rate and the rest get tacked to the principal balance!

Schools encourged students to borrow as absolutely much as possible. They raised tuition every year knowing that students would just borrow borrow borrow. Fast forward to 2003 and law school costs $30,000 A YEAR.

Well, those days are over. Student loans are more dififcult to obtain and private student loans are even more difficult. Who can go to school at $30k a year without loans? Not very many people at all.

Accordingly, expect us colleges and universities to be another casualty of the credit crunch. Which is a good thing because maybe they’ll start lowering tuition to attract students. People like me, 30 year old guys making $80k a year and $140k in debt should be a thing of the past.

I love ya, you make total sense, but you are scaring the bejesus out of me!!!!!