Via Althouse comes a parable of class warfare.
Legend has it that during a brutal contract bargaining session, Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's enforcer, attempted to break the tension by passing around snapshots taken during a visit to Maxon Lodge, a gorgeous hideaway in the woods of northern Michigan.
Walter Reuther, architect of the United Auto Workers' rise, looked over the photographs, tossed them on the table and said to Bennett: "Come the revolution, we'll own that place."
It was no idle threat. In 1967, flush with cash from a bulging membership, the UAW purchased the lodge and 1,000 acres on Black Lake.
And, as often happens with revolutionaries, the temptations of power were too strong to resist.
I've never quite understood why people differentiate between corporate fat cats and union fat cats. They're the same animal. They've clawed their way to the top of their respective institutions and share in the wealth and wallow in the resulting corruption of their symbiotic relationship.
The unions, however, did it on the backs of their membership, much in the way the government does; through taxation. Union dues, within in an effectively closed shop, are simply a form of taxation. For awhile, it was a sweet deal. The union bosses got rich. The workers were effectively rich. In getting there, however, they sucked the blood from the ever weakening corporations.
Michigan is now a basket case and Detroit is a wasteland. Corporate ossification certainly played a role, but it was in lockstep with the unions in a long march to the cliff. When the lightning struck, they were perfectly situated stampede over the edge, never quite figuring out why as they hit the bottom.
