Have you been exploited today?

Michael Lind, a founding member of the New America Foundation, believes the Civil War never ended, it just morphed. As much as many Southerners would love for the South to rise again, Mr. Lind may be giving them more credit than they are due.

The economic Axis is collaborating with the neo-Confederates against their common opponent -- the American Union. If they succeed, the losers will be not only non-Southern regions in the U.S., but the majority of Southerners of all races, whose interest in decent wages, good education, and adequate public services have almost always been sacrificed to the greed of the well-connected few by Southern statehouse gangs.

Thankfully, Mr. Lind provides and overview of the current civil war:

Today the division is no longer between slave and free states, or agrarian and industrial states, but between two models of industrial society -- the Northern model, based on adequate public service funding and taxation and unionization, and the Southern model, based on low-tax, low-service government and low-wage, non-unionized, easily exploited labor.

If this were satire, it would approach Jonathan Swift level hyperbole and dark humor. Alas, I think Mr. Lind is peddling his wares as truth.

Never mind that GM and Ford have had plants in the South for over 60 years, and have only recently begun abandoning them as they build new plants in Canada and Mexico. It is the mean ol' South that is trying to work with businesses to exploit low wage environments. Recent stories that non-union auto workers make wages that are competitive if not better than UAW workers quickly reveal the exploitation of Southern laborers is not as dire as Mr. Lind would have everyone believe.

What the facts do reveal is that US auto makers flat out stink at making a competitive product at a competitive price. They have lagged behind in styling, innovation, reliability, and just about every other measurable category. So who is to blame as US automakers stand at the brink of collapse? Certainly not the South.

If public service funding, taxation, unionization, and the resulting regulatory and financial burdens that follow are a good thing, a North vs. South economic war narrative may be just what is needed to draw lines in the sand for the troops that would fight for Mr. Lind's cause. After all, it sounds good, with its allusions to race, immoral Southern power brokers, and the fate of the great Nothern American culture hanging in the balance. Facts should never be allowed to get in the way of a good narrative.