Nope, Cuba doesn’t have universal pensions, only for the ruling elite. Not for the people. Ditto for health care though they have tried to in recent years to make universal coverage a reality, they still fail because they don’t care.

The fact you don’t know that is sad, I mean real sad.

The other fact that you don’t know that is sad, that the financial and business elite of America WISH that is how Americans were treated.

Treat your country like sheet and then flee when the populace is ready for revolt from your “freedom”. Freedom is having any health coverage at all. Most of them are usually “free market” types. Frauds, all of them. Worship those Hewbrew economists. As bad as the Marxists. Same coin on a different side.

oh for your information, had a Honda Accord in 2005, got rid of it because it stunk like hell. Breaks were always breaking down. Got rid of it and got a G8. Terrific car. Should have never left GM. Only ever had one car from them that stunk and that was the Olds Cutlass back in the 80’s with Oil leaks.

Yeah, all those old sorry blue collar losers who made those “awfull” cars should be treated like crap. Uh, no you should be treated like crap sir. You probably have never produced a damn thing for this country in your life, thus your right to say that is a joke.

401k’s are the BIGGEST fraud of financial “engineering” bs every forced by a bunch of international financiers.

Pure bs. It was just a excuse to rip people off of money and loot it into S@P accounts of the pigmen.

The UAW doesn’t mean sheet. That “union” has had
power ripped away over the year and now controls a majority stake of its pensions which it can doll out at ITS CONVENIENCE.

Meaning this “bailout” is for the sale of the auto companies sans Ford. I bet you a buck they already have buyers, especially GM.

Listen, you want to know the REAL reason the auto-companies are in such trouble: Government selling them out in trade, overcapacity and poor management. Whaaa, whaaa lets blame the HISTORICALLY weak UAW.

Until this type of thinking and we get a government that enforces a America first, whatever interest group(business,labor,consumer etc etc) mentality 2nd, we are done as a nation.

This type of attitude killed the W.Germany and forced in a really incredibly productive but destructive regime in Nazism. a paradox we can do without the destruction.

It is the job of the government to come in and help its homegrown businesses. We owe the great Henry Ford and the Ford family that as he was one of America’s great men. The Ford company was in similar shape in the 1930’s and rebuilt into a powerhouse post-depression.

They will again.

Stop the self-righteous internationalism. If you hate this country as much as people like “Casual Observer” leave it. You love the sleaze fraud and mob tactics, leave it and get out.

For you others that want to rebuild America as a true power against the foreign bankers and international financial death doctors, lets march together. We can overcome.

What makes auto workers so darned special to have their pension – which was never their money (as in possessed by them) in the first place – paid by the federal government?

Detroit has had to pay $2500 more per vehicle for labor than the other makers who have factories here in the U.S. precisely because of these unions, and now the unions are getting $25B?

Money for votes,and votes for money. That is what American politics has turned into. This is corrupt and sickening.

Sometimes there is no solution. At least one that I care about. I have my own kids to worry about. Those pensioners never gave me a dime, nor did I ask for one. During their working lives they made three times the wages my family ever did, and they bequeathed cars to my family that rusted out in Ohio’s winters in to hulks that no longer had pillar to hold up windshields.

After all that, my father never had a pension, but saved what he could and never asked for a bailout.

I’m sure you’ll agree in the principal of fairness that they get not a dime from our kids. So, no, I have no solution from them. Maybe they could move to Cuba- I hear the cars of old are still popular there, and there is universal pension and health care for everyone in that island paradise.

The contract was between the auto makers and the UAW, not between the UAW and the taxpayers.

Sgt_Joe: We also have Medicare for retirees. The UAW has resisted shifting retired members to the Medicare plan because it isn’t nearly as generous as the one provided by the auto makers. The UAW, despite its claim that we need nationalized health care, sure hasn’t be been in any hurry to shift retirees to Medicare.

Hmm… I could be wrong about this, but don’t we already have something called “Social Security” that performs this function? Too bad the government pissed away the funds that were supposed to go towards actually paying for this archaic program.

And how about the white collar retirees, like my father, who haven’t suckled at the union teet all these years and as of Jan. 1 will no longer have the GM funded healthcare he was promised?

While the UAW has successfully coerced money out of GM for its union brothers and sisters, it has done so at the expense of its former co-workers, simply because they didn’t pay the dues. It’s one thing to cut the benefits of people who are still working and can at least theoretically adjust. It’s a completely different thing to cut the benefits of people who are no longer in the workforce and relied on those benefits to get by in their retirement years.

Way to go Pelosi. You suck.

So what’s the solution, make sure nobody has a pension including those who had their pensions guaranteed in their contract? I would propose the opposite; let’s give a semi-decent universal pension to everybody; something a retiree can very modestly live off, nothing lavish like they have in Europe. Then if your company goes belly up and your pension with it there would be no real need for the government to take over or top up the private pensions. But I suppose that would be too socialist for America, wouldn’t it? It’s better to take from the needy to give to the less needy because that’s capitalism, correct?

Glad to see you’ve got our backs, Nancy.

Sort of take from the have-nots and give to the haves. This here that redistribution of wealth I been hearing about?

Of course, once a retiree hits 65, he’d go on Medicare. If that’s not enough, he can buy a supplemental policy from AARP or whoever, using his own money. We wouldn’t want to give UAW members better treatment than other Americans get, would we?

Hypocrisy? In our government leader? Really?

RF, don’t you realize that it is do as I tell you, not as I do.

Usta Bee, either one you buy will turn to shit

Sellphone, I wrote my congressman (Dan Burton, R-IN) and pledged not to vote for him if he passed TARP. He promised he wouldn’t, didn’t the first vote, did the second time. Unlike him, I kept my promise and didn’t vote for him.

No, more like the huge backlash that derailed immigration reform…

GM wasn’t planning on paying for the VEBA anyway. They were just going to stiff the UAW. If anything, this is a UAW bailout.

Why not wait for details of the loan program before you trash it? President-elect Obama has clearly said many time that he wants to help the U.S. auto industry. He was elected on this platform. The people have spoken.

Congress will hear from their constituents, and it won’t pass.

Really? Just like the HUGE backlash that resulted from the proposed 700B financial bailout, that caused constituents to SAY NO 100 to 1? And then what did “our representatives” do? They passed it anyway. With an additional 150B of pork.

This will pass without a whimper. And have absolutely zero effect on saving the D2.5.

There will be a big backlash to this. The public doesn’t want to use tax dollars to pay for gold plated retirement benefits for the UAW.

Congress will hear from their constituents, and it won’t pass.