The announcement by GM to eliminate a whopping 30,000 jobs delivers a good opportunity for a lesson in causes & effects. Since you're very unlikely to receive any sort of accurate assignment of same anywhere in the major media, let's give it a bit of a go here, shall we? Of course, you're going to hear the standard inversion of cause and effect. You're going to "learn," because the labor unions are going to make sure you do, that the "reason" for the dire straits in which U.S. automakers find themselves is due to competition from Japan and Korea. And it's true, except that this "unbeatable" competition isn't a cause, it's an effect. In the same article I linked above, they talk all around the real cause, bringing up and implying all sorts of causes that are not causes at all, but effects. The primary practical cause (principle causes are philosophic in nature) is contained right within the article, but is not identified as such. The UAW responded to Wagoner's announcement with an angry statement to the media indicating it would push to keep furloughed workers on GM's payrolls for the duration of its current labor contract, which expires in...