Bye bye GM/Chrysler/Ford??

[youngfarang]

We've been in decline for years its just so bad that the average person realizes it.

That's what I've been saying for years. All of these GOP tax cuts are not free. We are seeing the cost of 30 years of Reaganomics!

 

The only question is if we can salvage anything or not.

 

Cheers' date='

SD[/quote']

 

Geez SD you are talking about pissing away money and all we hear is that the Democrats want to bail everybody out!!!!! How you can you support this bailout? Are you afraid of putting 3 million people out of jobs? Please give me a break they will still have jobs. If they decide 75 dollars an hour isn't good enough (yes I know you think there is a conspiracy that they only make 25 $ an hour yet you still fail to show the board a link to this "conspiracy theory") then they can piss off and we can hire the 20 some odd million unemployed workers a job there for at least half of what the union workers are making. Makes sense doesn't it? But wait we just extended unemployment rates by another 13 weeks recently so why look for a job if they are going to keep paying me to stay on my couch all day? Did you know you can collect up to 1 year of unemployment benefits?!

 

[Hugh_Hoy]

Look, it isn't just the UAW union that wants/gets more than they're really worth. It's really the NFL players union. If they didn't demand so much, TV rights wouldn't cost so much and then TV ads wouldn't cost so much for the car companies. It all comes back to the greedy union members...whether blue collar or wearing pads and a helmet.

 

HH

[Bangkoktraveler]

Look, it isn't just the UAW union that wants/gets more than they're really worth. It's really the NFL players union. If they didn't demand so much, TV rights wouldn't cost so much and then TV ads wouldn't cost so much for the car companies. It all comes back to the greedy union members...whether blue collar or wearing pads and a helmet.

 

HH

 

 

You forgot government unions and all the benefits they get. Why not get rid of the government unions first along with some of their benefits such as health insurance?

 

[kamui]

[ Please give me a break they will still have jobs. If they decide 75 dollars an hour isn't good enough (yes I know you think there is a conspiracy that they only make 25 $ an hour yet you still fail to show the board a link to this "conspiracy theory") then they can piss off and we can hire the 20 some odd million unemployed workers a job there for at least half of what the union workers are making.

 

You still only read GOP talking points and you even did not read the whole thread, right? They do not earn 75 USD and you can find links in this thread. Wages are only 10% of the production costs of an car anyway.

 

And you have never been in an city/area where major companies closed down.

I grew up in the biggest industrial area "Ruhrgebiet" (Ruhr area) in Europe in a time when the coal mines and the steel industries went bust. The trickle down effect was a disastrous: The job losses in the core industry aside, the supply industry, restaurants, retailers, e.g. went bankrupt soon after, the towns ran out of money too and schools, theaters, street repair could not be funded properly anymore. It took over two decades for the cities to recover and some cities never did.

1-3 million jobs will not be replaced soon, especially not in a recession, neither in the 'rust belt' nor outside with mounting job losses all over the US.

 

[drogon]

Damn, who could believe that these people earn 75$/hour....even my American CEO is not making that.

 

Thanks GOP bullshit

 

And salary per hour, no matter if gross or net is not = to overall social/employee charges a company has to pay -> which is what I suspect are the real charges for company but the GOP found "convenient" to mention as "employee's salary per hour"

 

[ghelseth]

Why not just have health insurance for everyone, like most civilized countries in the world instead? Henry Ford figured out one thing pretty quick: if he didn't pay his workers much they wouldn't be able to buy a Ford. Why not a $25B bailout for the Big 3 with lots of strings attached as opposed to $335B spent so far on banks and AIG? Yesterday a reporter on PBS stated that half of that disbursement has gone to dividends and bonuses. Moreover, why is it so easy to give a bailout to someone who sits at a desk and may have contributed to this recession and so difficult to give a much smaller one to people who actually make something?

[kamui]

Why not just have health insurance for everyone, like most civilized countries in the world instead? Henry Ford figured out one thing pretty quick: if he didn't pay his workers much they wouldn't be able to buy a Ford. Why not a $25B bailout for the Big 3 with lots of strings attached as opposed to $335B spent so far on banks and AIG? Yesterday a reporter on PBS stated that half of that disbursement has gone to dividends and bonuses. Moreover, why is it so easy to give a bailout to someone who sits at a desk and may have contributed to this recession and so difficult to give a much smaller one to people who actually make something?

 

In the "Land of the free" the main GOP doctrine is, that everybody has to care from himself, except the rich and the big companies of which the government and its cronies are taking care of.

This ideology goes so far to say that it is OK that you die earlier, if you are poor, or that you go bankrupt when a member of your family becomes chronically/terminally ill.

Besides privatized health care (the worst of all industrialized countries) the next step would have been to privatize social security. This was already on McCain's agenda and he is moderate REP.

In a way the US is acting more and more like a third world country.

 

Speaking of big money and big companies:

GWB has wasted much more than the current bail out money since 2003 for the faild attempt to rebuild Iraq (not to speak for funding the war and the military itself):

 

Report Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then [color:red]molded into a $100 billion failure[/color] by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

NYT

 

[buffalo_bill]

The hybrid system is a german invention but was not followed upo because fuel was too cheap to make it in any way attractive to buyers . The Japanese startet it as a marketing campaign at the right time , within 3 years most german built cars will have a hybrid available ; you don't need long term strategies for this . The hybrid is an intermediate thing anway , the secret is in high capacity electricity storage systems . I do not even call them batteries any more .

 

About the US car makers : a completely fucked up car manufacturer ( Fiat ) did survive because the unions gave in to a degree and they built the right cars . DB , BMW and VW have a strong financial basis because they mede themseves slim over the last 6 years . No point to let GM continue working in a senseless way , a forced rstructurung is the way to go .

[driftwood]

Lets say the quailty is basically the same.

 

Judging by the cars that friends and family own, the big 3 cars still lag behind in quality of the Asian manufacturers. They have gotten better but there is still a difference.

 

Not many people are going to spend 25k, 30k or more on a possibility. Why chance it? You go with the sure thing not the maybe.

 

That is true, people are going to go with personnel experience and observation, rather than what the media and PR machines tells them.

[Steve]

Why not just have health insurance for everyone, like most civilized countries in the world instead?

 

I was always against nationalized health care or health insurance as it were in the past because of my fairly strong libertarian leanings.

 

I'm willing to support it now but NOT under the current system that now governs the congress. The players in all this, the HMOs, the AMA (American Medical Association), the pharmaceutical companies, etc., currently have too much power over the politicians in Washington and at the state level.

 

ANY health care plan will be their benefit first and foremost and if it helps the average American it will be largely by coincidence.

 

Why can't each state have its own plan that covers its own citizens. Then create a federal law that when someone changes residency to another state there is some interim bridge whereby they are either covered by their former state up to a year (till residency is the new state is established) or the government foots the bill till residency is established. Make certain rules if you're unemployed or on public assitance, etc?

Perhaps even have a lump sum government amount as seed money. Lets say we have 300 billion and divide it up amongst the states according to population or whatever other means as startup money. Put restrictions on it so the states don't use to it to give politicians pay raises or waste it on something else as they did with the tobacco settlement.

Some states have certain health concerns or demographics that will help it focus its monies better on that niche. Florida for geriatric care for example. Hawaii has a large number of young people. Lets see how it works on a statewide basis and then eventually roll it out on a national level. I think we'll find that some states will come up with unique and effective plans, while others won't. We can incorporate the best into a national plan eventually.