Daily Archives: 22 October 2019

There are Bribes

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…and there are bribes.  Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam tried to bribe the good people of Hong Kong the other day.  She gave her annual address on her policies for the coming year, and in it she “promised” (because we’ve seen the value of her commitments in her promise to completely withdraw and rescind her draft extradition law, a promise on which she has since welched)

to boost the supply of low-cost homes, offer mortgage assistance for first-time buyers, and increase mass-transit fare subsidies

if only Hong Kong’s people would just shut up, go home, and submit.

Those folks didn’t, and don’t, believe her.

Mrs Lam’s speech this week “has not really focused on the protest itself,” a 26-year-old demonstrator…said Sunday.

And tens of thousands of Hong Kong’s finest hit the streets again Sunday, to be met with tear gas and water cannon firing abrasive, dyed liquids shot at them by Hong Kong’s increasingly thuggish police.  It’s true enough, some demonstrators also have resorted to violence—lighting fires in street intersections, trashing some store fronts, the rare Molotov cocktail tossed at those police.  It’s also true enough that incitement to violence, even when the incitement comes from police, is not, by itself, an excuse for responding with violence.

However, given that Lam and her city government have utterly ignored the desires of the people over whom she reigns as PRC President Xi Jinping’s satrap, their increasing frustration and violence are completely understandable.

Lam’s bribes, which insult those citizens’ integrity and intelligence, only add fuel to that frustration.

Costs of a Strike

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There’s a lot of discussion about the costs of the UAW’s strike against GM.  The Wall Street Journal is an example:

Economists say the cascading effect of lost wages, production, and employment will likely linger even if the strike ends….

And

…suspended work at another two dozen company-owned parts warehouses and distribution centers and led to temporary layoffs of nearly 10,000 GM factory workers not represented by the UAW….

And

Striking GM workers also are pulling back on spending, having now lost a month’s worth of company paychecks. Many are trying to get by on $275 a week, the strike pay offered by the UAW to provide some financial assistance. That figure is a fraction of their regular pay, which ranges from $630 to $1,200 for a 40-hour week.

And

120 of GM’s direct suppliers furloughed some 17,000 workers in the US during the strike….

And the damage from the UAW’s action has spread even farther, as this example illustrates:

Sam Kassab, 65, owns the Chene Trombly market where he sells food and liquor close to GM’s Detroit assembly plant. The strike is costing him between 10% to 15% of his usual business, Mr Kassab said, with most of that caused by layoffs at the supplier factories nearby.

No one, though, is talking about the cost of the strike to the union—not the workers, but the UAW itself.  Who, or what, is propping up the UAW, covering its costs, as it prosecutes it blockage of GM’s ability to function at all unless the union gets its way (with all the resulting collateral damage to suppliers, about which the UAW so plainly cares not a whit)?

And another discussion not being held: how will the UAW make whole those collaterally damaged suppliers and their workers?