The Microcosm

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Bob Cunningham explains how Detroit's Big Three fit in: The real story is the frightening extent to which Detroit is just the New Deal U.S. in microcosm...the Big 3 became essentially private versions of the middle class welfare state...social agencies for providing non-market validated income, health and retirement benefits, with a sideline of making cars....and now the model is unsustainable. In part it is because of the burden of the retired UAW workforce, which now vastly outnumbers the actual working members. As of 2007, the UAW represented 180,681 members at Chrysler, Ford and General Motors; it also represented 419,621 retired members and 120,723 surviving spouses. This is not dissimilar to Social Security and Medicare for the U.S. economy as a whole. Both of these entitlement programs are unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government, politically, if not legally, and, on a current basis, consume almost 50% of the $3 trillion federal budget.