27 Comments

• 1. John Drinkwater  |  May 27th, 2011 at 5:00 pm

  Best appearance yet, Mark. Good work…

  Unions started breaking down before Reagan, though. For instance:

  “The beginning in the early 1970s, changes in the global economy, competition from European and Japanese automobile makers, and management decisions at the U.S. automakers had already started to significantly reduce the profits of the major auto makers and set the stage for the drastic changes in the 1The arrival of Volkswagen, Honda and other imports threatened the industry area. When the German and Japanese companies opened plants in the USA, they headed to the South and operated without unions.”

  “The situation for the automotive industry and UAW members worsened dramatically with the 1973 oil embargo. Rising fuel prices caused the U.S. auto makers to lose market share to foreign manufacturers who placed more emphasis on fuel efficiency. This started years of layoffs and wage reductions, and the UAW found itself in the position of giving up many of the benefits it had won for workers over the decades.”

• 2. William Davis  |  May 27th, 2011 at 7:15 pm

  Matt Miller is a dick

• 3. RobertD  |  May 28th, 2011 at 2:26 am

  How big a deal is Dylan Ratigan in the US? Do a lot of people watch his show? Will featuring the Exile writers regularly get them mainstream recognition?

• 4. Mr. Bad  |  May 28th, 2011 at 7:07 am

  No arguments here but if I were Gavin McInnes I’d be upset seeing this

• 5. woundedduck  |  May 28th, 2011 at 10:00 am

  I am so fucking sick of this country’s bullshit. No vacation, trillion dollar military, no free college, no free healthcare. SO FUCKING SICK.

• 6. Jack  |  May 28th, 2011 at 12:49 pm

  Western European countries can afford to have a lot more paid vacation days than Americans because the average European has a lot less personal debt than the average American. Combined with much stronger labor movements in their culture and politics and their already high living standards, European countries decided that there is no need to work longer hours to support even higher living standards (big house, second car, etc.).

  America and China might not have the luxury of having more vacation days right now even with strong labor movements. China is a developing country. A lot of the citizens do want to work harder for better (i.e. First World) living standards. In America, people have racked up a lot of personal debt from houses and cars. Even not counting college and medical debts, the typical American family owe a lot of money that can only be paid off if they work more.

• 7. Sisyphus  |  May 28th, 2011 at 4:32 pm

  Ames must fucking hate going on there, being made to say “butt” after spending a decade in Russia fucking dyevs in the ass.

• 8. Punjabi from Karachi  |  May 28th, 2011 at 5:46 pm

  Annoying but funny. Good job Mark. Multiple system wide crashes had to happen to bring your ideas to the fore.
  I’ll stop here because —

• 9. derewigegastarbeiter  |  May 28th, 2011 at 11:50 pm

  I moved to the US a while ago from France, seeing that change as an opportunity for something other than increasing racial tension, endemic issues with housing costs (the bubble never burst there) and a general sense of despair and resignation. So much for that.

  While I had no delusions about life in America, working here will devour your life to such an extent that being a second-class citizen there would still insure you more basic rights, be it vacation time, health care or job security. And I’m one of the lucky ones in terms of prospects and opportunities. Does that warrant going back in itself? I don’t even know anymore. I’m just so fucking tired.

• 10. Charles  |  May 29th, 2011 at 2:11 am

  Great,I hope Americans try as much as possible to get decent work conditions. Although the way things are going the UK is becoming (if not already) the ‘America’ of Europe.

• 11. Esn  |  May 29th, 2011 at 4:47 am

  The point is entirely valid.

  As for the appearance: my opinions are so highly-valued that I’ll only tell you if you let me post them on your comments section. That’s how much everyone values my opinions

• 12. John Drinkwater  |  May 29th, 2011 at 7:12 am

  I moved from the States to Canada recently. Canada is far from perfect, and so is the health care system, but it’s leagues better than the US. As for time off, a telling thing about the difference between the US and Canada is to observe the medical clinics on weekdays and weekends. Coming from the States, I figured the walk-in medical clinics would be less busy during the week compared to the weekends. But it’s not the case. Most people use their weekends to actually take time off; they go to the doctor during the week, because they’re allowed by their employers. In the States, you could get fired for leaving the office to go to a doctor.

• 13. Teskulon  |  May 29th, 2011 at 10:32 am

  Hi, my name is–well, my initials are GI as in GI Joe except that I’m a Canadian fashionista so it’s kinda hard to take my machismo seriously buuuuuut…That said, what I really want to hear about, as a Canadian fashionista, is illegal immigration. See cuz here how’s the whole illegal immigration thing works. Big corporations have always promoted illegal immigration as much as they could. Then, they also promote racism against illegal immigration (you know, like “they’re ruining our culture” and stuff), and they fund the whole anti-illegal immigration attack movement. That’s where I come in.

  Now, why would big corporations do that, you ask? Welp, it’s obvious. They subvert the system to bring in illegal immigrants in order to lower wages and fuck unions. So, why would they also promote the anti-illegal immigration movement in a culture war/racism way? Because they want anyone who’s against illegal immigration to focus on the alleged threat to white culture, rather than focusing on the perpetrators of illegal immigration: Corporate America. So you have tools like a certain Canadian Fashionista making a big edgy hipster stink about the illegal immigrants’ threat to white culture, while not saying peep about how Big Corporations and especially libertarians have always been the forces promoting illegal immigration.

  That’s all for now.

  Edgily yours,
  GI Fashionista

• 14. the other Jon  |  May 29th, 2011 at 12:01 pm

  I don’t mean to sound gay or anything, but seriously, Ames looks like a fucking movie star here. His one problem, and a minor one at that, is his Reagan fixation. While I would certainly agree that Reagan put the nail in the middle class coffin, the trend toward globalization, which coincided with the first stages of financial deregulation, started under Carter in the 70s.

  Though I understand that Reagan is to Ames what Nixon was to HST, and I won’t dispute Reagan’s viciousness, I nonetheless think that it’s doing a disservice to the more credulous readers/viewers to say that Reagan was the sole problem, and that if we would just vote for Democrats then all our problems would be solved.

  At this point, frankly, the march towards serfdom (and, like Ames has pointed out before, I don’t mean we’re on the road to serfdom, as Republicans continually warn; I mean we are already serfs, or at at least fast approaching that point) is inexorable. Embrace nihilism, Ames!

• 15. Mango  |  May 29th, 2011 at 3:22 pm

  How can you people live like this – with only a few days paid holiday per year?

  I had exactly the same thoughts about this that Ames did. See you on the beach US worker drones 🙂

  http://tinyurl.com/3bw424u

• 16. Duarte Guerreiro  |  May 29th, 2011 at 3:47 pm

  Oh Mark, so saucy, saying butt like a rebel! And such a saucy shirt too.

• 17. super390  |  May 29th, 2011 at 4:25 pm

  The shifts in balance of power between owners and workers determine how bad things get for workers, not their supposed laziness. All this blaming foreign competition fails to note that Germany still exports manufactures despite its wages, benefits and hours. Europe was already high-wage 30 years ago, and America’s capitalist media was already brainwashing us to see Europe as stagnant, communistic and doomed. We were being prepared to accept our rape as necessary, even though 30 years of Reaganism have not gained us an inch against Europe because every cent of the benefits went to our rich.

  Don’t forget that South Korean auto workers made $2 an hour – and crappy cars – until they joined with the radical student movement to overthrow the pro-US junta, brought in democracy, and made their bosses have to build better, exportable cars. Now wages are far higher, Hyundai may be surpassing Toyota as the best mass-market carmaker, and South Korea now is leaping past us in broadband internet and advanced chip manufacturing.

  But this is not the story we have been told.
  It’s our own story. When our great-grandparents picked up red banners and marched in the streets and terrified their bosses into accepting a new balance of power, it took America 12 years to rise off its knees to become the world’s first superpower.

  In fact, Americans are never taught that classes exist, or that classes can have power over others, much less than that the lower class might wield that power more beneficially than their masters. Libertarians blatantly ignore that money = power, because they refuse to concede that infinite economic inequality means democracy is meaningless. In America workers are taught to hate themselves as a group, and only admire themselves as individuals who, Ralph Kramden-like, are only one entrepreneurial scheme away from moving on up.

  In Europe, despite the best efforts of evil men, the poor have not yet been Americanized, and they still maintain a balance of terror against the rich, though they’re losing ground austerity scheme after austerity scheme. If they can hold on, they will find themselves joined by workers in rising economies all over the world, even China, while America literally reintroduces prison slave labor, indentured servitude and inheritable debt in blind obedience to the dogma that wealth requires the punishment of the evil, defective poor all the way back to Medieval peasantry.

  Fight or starve. There are no other options.

• 18. Byebye  |  May 30th, 2011 at 10:40 am

  @derewigegastarbeiter There won’t be a France in the next 150 years. Muslims breed like crazy and the French governments pays them a fortune for having extra babies.

• 19. Erik  |  May 30th, 2011 at 12:03 pm

  Me personally, I have an important opinion I want to share with everyone. Here’s my opinion: Ames is a fucking god. Any other opinions I might have are only relevant to my mom, and the thing is I hate my mom because she keeps giving me shit for spending so much time on the eXile site, posting resentful comments. My mom just doesn’t get me.

• 20. jack  |  May 31st, 2011 at 12:06 pm

  in Austria you get 5 weeks of paid holidays. I guess Americans just haven’t realised that you also need the time to spend the money you make to keep the economy rolling.
  Well, now I’m putting on my speedo and I’m off to the beach folks in my small faggot european car. See ya’ll in 3 weeks!

• 21. Esperanto Lives  |  May 31st, 2011 at 7:13 pm

  I love Mark’s strategy here, which is absolutely genius. Spite and pride has a power to change things that comparatively weaksauce compassion doesn’t. People are not motivated by compassion. Mark Ames is a born populist…why can’t political campaigns brand like this?

  He calls the French and Europeans “degenerates,” and who can disagree when you see those fruity Euro-types in speedos hogging the beach and stealing your girlfriend or boyfriend with their crass Pepe le Pew ways?

  Are we Americans gonna let them be better than us? Take longer vacations and lead more satisfying lives? No way!

  Now that’s real balls, I have to admit. One thing that always bugs me about dealing with leftists is the constant “where’s the outrage?” attitude. Maybe there’s no outrage, geniuses, because people don’t care about the same sort of stuff sanctimonious liberals do. I don’t think first world people care…truly care at all…about dying orphans in Ethiopia, for instance.

  But snotty schnapps-drinking, house music listening Spanish assholes in speedos thinking they’re better than us Americans? Hooboy, that’ll really get people steamed enough to make things happen!

  To the Eurofags posting in comments, jeering like cowardly jackals with sneering contempt at Americans…congratulations, you’re doing exactly what Mark wants you to do, playing right into his hands and you’re too dumb to realize it. Be insufferable and smarmy enough that Americans will hate you (well, more than we do already) enough to change things out of pride and spite the lot of you in your faces marked with grotesque, sunburned lizard flesh.

  No, really, we appreciate that almost as much as we enjoy your numerous failed attempts to ram soccer and Tintin comics down our throats, the two greatest cures for insomnia since the invention of the hammer and just as painful.

• 22. William Rush  |  May 31st, 2011 at 10:07 pm

  I’m Canadian and I get 3 weeks of paid vacation every year.I’m part of a union and I have job security. I can make over 60 thousand a year and all I am is a part-time telemarketer who only works 27 hours a week.

• 23. Esn  |  June 1st, 2011 at 4:39 am

  Looks like someone cared enough about my opinions to improve my previous post! I exist! Hahahah!

  Don’t you guys know that you’re supposed to IMPROVE retards if you want to show that you have contempt for them? Retards stuck in the Ayn Rand mentality think you should give ’em the silent treatment, but you’ve gone the next level and actually gone out and improved human vomit such as myself. Show ’em that the world gives a damn. You being the world, of course.

  You guys are way too nice to the vomit that stains your comments section.

• 24. American Woman Are Fat  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 8:26 am

  @ Esperanto Lives: Never mid soccer and comic books: greasy Euros are very good at getting American girlies to swallow their swarthy pingas, aren’t they? Where do US women go on sex tour/”semester abroad”: the Med, or the US?

• 25. gary  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 1:02 pm

  when i started working for new york city in 1971 i had a months vacation and 12 sick days a year….ofcourse by 1974 the city was broke and the bank would not cash my paycheck…this is economics..we bitch about “exporting “our jobs but buying american is too dear…we are even exporting jobs in tha usa…car companies are closing plants in ohio to open them in kentucky…cheaplocal labor
  as for that canadian telemarketter who earns 60 grand for working 27 hours a week..that is because your job is such an obnoxious one like an undertaker that you must be heavily compensated…p.s. stop calling me!!!!!!!!!

• 26. TheLounge  |  June 2nd, 2011 at 5:40 pm

  That shirt is saucy.

• 27. jim  |  June 6th, 2011 at 10:22 am

  ZERO protected holidays or leave days?

  Yet again I find myself reciting the Mantra For Americans:

  Oh shit, that must suck so bad … I really feel sorry for you folks.

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