White Collar and Blue Collar. Who is worse?

The week was punctuated with two significant news pieces: the UAW's refusal to accept wage cuts (who in their right mind will accept wage cuts at a time of economic uncertainty?) and Bernard Madoff's arrest for possibly defrauding 50 BILLION in a Ponzi scheme. I mean, c'mon, 50 BILLION?!?! For the former subject, Republican talking heads and white-haired Corker laid the blame on those greedy unions, which proceeds from a condescending trend started with the housing crisis. I don't know why the Republicans aren't up in arms that one single man could do so much harm, or that a collection of a few financial executives and their subordinates are largely getting a free pass on their ridiculously inflated incomes.

I don't want to play on class antagonism, but there is an underlying dismissal of the working-class, lower middle-class, and poor for being stupid and greedy, but yet they weren't the ones who pushed poor loans and failed to diversify their holdings leading to bailouts. And, further, I don't know why the White House and Democratic allies aren't referring to this as a "rescue" like they did for the financial firms? Sure, I know it's a dubious label that strains credulity, but I think it's ridiculous that auto companies are the ones who've committed the most serious errors and why they deserve the greatest scrutiny. How often do people ask how people fly into DC to testify? Were any financial execs grilled like that? Nope. And, yes, I know the Big Three's products aren't appealing, but the business model Merrill, Citi, and a host of others followed was transparently flawed to the tune of several hundred billion.

And the easy response is that the banking industry is the important sector. That's true, and I wouldn't dispute that it's relevance to global economics is paramount. But that shouldn't give any executives a free pass. They don't deserve it either, which is where the fundamental hypocrisy exists. And let's face it: none of the financial company's execs were willing to work for the dollar a year salary, and at least the Big Three's were willing to make that commitment in earnest.