Rich wrote:
1) There's nothing hypocritical what so ever about playing by the rules of the system as they currently stand, but campaigning to change the rules of the game. Similarly there's nothing hypocritical about paying the going rate in an industry, but campaigning for changes in government policy that will lead to raises in the going rate.
2) In fact paying above the going rate in an industry is immoral. I believe Ford used this nasty selfish practice in their early days. By paying above market rates they cream off all best workers.
3) When other companies start doing this, it can quickly lead to a situation where the worst workers are left unemployed. The poorest workers can often have very low or even negative productivity. While its good for the individual companies to not employ these workers its very much bad for society as being unemployed tends to further reduce their potential productivity.
4) Its funny how Liberals always get it wrong. So as a general rule we want to provide employment for everyone, even if the poorest sections of workers don't really justify their wages. So you've got some Liberal President like Lyndon Johnson, who appoints some Liberal General like Westmoreland to run the war in Vietnam. Obviously for this Liberal Vietnam was just one giant job creation scheme for mentally sub normal workers.
5) Now some people might think that sending mentally sub normal soldiers into battle was potentially disastrous. Some might even think of the policy as cruel, but then Nazi types would even suggest that the collectivisation of agriculture in the Soviet Union was cruel. But actually its a brilliant Liberal policy, because the more the war goes wrong, the more blame and scorn can be heaped upon the Conservatives. However of course Nazis will continue to argue that wars are actually a special case and that winning them and winning them quickly should take precedence over progressive social engineering.
This place is like a bar.
1) If I were your English teacher, I would hand that back to you, and ask for you to rewrite it with clarity in mind.
2) That's called competition. Ford could afford to pay top dollar, and get the best. Nothing wrong with that.
3) That sort of situation usually happens in a healthy economy. Rising pay motivates people. You appear to be looking at a problem we have now (arising from a distortion in the economy that results from wages being intentionally held down) and attributing it to a healthy economy.
4) LBJ was known for dominating others wherever he went. Today that would get him thrown in jail. Westmoreland had precisely zero to do with politics. The buildup in Vietnam was partly an accident. McNamara brought advances from business to the government. This improved our ability to move men and supplies dramatically. So what happened was a steady increase without anyone actually deciding for it to get that big. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. It's right there in the history.
5) This is a lot more complicated than you think it is. I am going to focus on one part of it. When this started, we wanted a win like Korea. Which was reasonable. But nobody actually wanted that, they just couldn't admit it, even to themselves. Korea was awful, we were fighting the massive Chinese army, and that was nightmarish.
Even worse, Vietnam borders on Russia, and Russia is massively paranoid about armies near it's borders. If we moved North (like we did in Korea) than we'd be fighting both China and Russia. The military wanted to go North, the civilian leadership couldn't face it.
One last thing, about the Soviet takeover of farming. They killed millions doing it. They had trains go to Siberia in winter. They forced farmers and their families off the trains at gunpoint. And then they chugged backwards towards Moscow, leaving men, women and children to die in the sub zero cold.