The Implications of Small Things

Both the Wall Street Journal and the NYTimes (All the news fit to wrap your fish in) have front page articles on the Obama raising tariffs on tires made in China. Of course the WSJ takes the consumer friendly point of view - this will have an impact on low income people who buy the inexpensive Chinese made tires and the NYT takes the Labor Union friendly view - cheap Chinese tires cost Union jobs, sighting no evidence to support the assertion. Both papers did speculate, though, that the move by the Obama was a bone to the Unions as down payment for their support of his socialization of health care. Of course the Obama is not pandering to the union workers - he could care less about them and they will non be affected by socialized health care anyway - union workers already have gold plated health care and will surely not give that up for the public, clinic style health care the rest of us will be stuck with - he wants Union management onboard - socialists of a feather, etc, etc. The interesting thing is, only about 12.4% of US workers belong to unions (and I would bet half of them not by choice) so why push so hard to get the unions on board with socialized medicine? It is a perception issue - by getting the unions on board it gives the perception that the Obama has the US labor force behind him and he is for the workers. Most people don't know that only 12% of the work force belongs to unions, they also don't understand that the union won't be affected by the Obamacare. IF they understood all of this the majority of employees in this country would be fully against Obamacare. The Obama's move against China also points out that he doesn't care about those at the bottom of the income scale.