Now we have to bailout the Auto industry. Why is it that the Auto industry is always in trouble? And really, isn't the problem that they have built a bunch of cars that no one wants? How is giving 45 Billion tax payer dollars going to help that? Maybe we should give tax payers the money back so we can afford to go buy cars. Maybe take some of that mone and invest it in creating energy efficient cars that are not reliant on fossil fuels. Look, Detroit has continued to produce gas guzzling monsters over the past 10 years, eventhough any one with a brain has predicted that oil prices were going to rise. They didn't invest in new technology like Hydro Cell, Natural Gas, Electric, and other options. That is their fault. I'm sick of bailing out companies for poor business decisions. Believe me, I run a company of 50 employees and if I invest in bad products and bad business decisions, Uncle Barak isn't goint to be bailing me out. You want more jobs? Cancel NAFTA yesterday. Penalize companies like Compaq, Dell, Apple, IBM and others who send jobs over seas to cheap labor. Hike up the tarriffs on crap items coming out of China. Empower American Manufactures. Tell Nike, Adidas, and Kathy Lee Gifford they are going to get a tremendous tax penalty for employing cheap labor over seas. If we can afford to give away 700,000,000,000 to poorly run companies, we can afford to invest in our Made in the USA companies and whack these cheap labor communists who are ruining this country.
The American Auto industry is a reflection of Corporate-Capitalism Ideology in "Modern" America. No investment in modern technology, no investment in protecting the environment, no advancement of worker safety, worker pay or worker benefits. And an absolute dearth of innovative design ideas or creativity in any form. They're still trying to exploit their successful designs of the 60's by offering Retro versions of Mustangs and Camaros rather than hire someone with a brain to bring them into the 21st Century. Like throwing money on a bonfire.
They stopped innovation because of the oil industry. We sat back and let them decay knowing full well that the rest of the world's auto industry was evolving. It takes 18 months for a Japanese auto company to take a design to market, it takes a US company 8 years. We killed the eletric car, we killed the hydrogen car, and hence we killed ourselves. Now just like the stock market the greedy bastards want the tax payers to pay for their mistakes. As Karl Marx predicted, the greed of capitalism will lead to socialism because it has to. Welcome to the evolution of the "free" market where industries team up to maintain a monoply to make record profits only to come crying when things don't work out. I look at it like this, the free market is basically dead in the US. Percription drugs, airlines, telecommunications, education, aggriculture, sports, television. None of these are competitive industries, they are all connected and owned by a small few. Now those small few cannot make money because of the stock market crashing and taking all of their capital with them. You are watching a country fail, and it is because of greed.
I blame NASCAR. Ok, only half seriously. My aunt bought a 1987 Ford Taurus. The car was a big deal back then, really advanced for the time. My girlfriend had a 2006 Taurus as a company car.....It was basically the same car with different body panels and a trip computer in the dash. WHOOPTIE DAMN DO!!!! Hyundai has gone from a joke of a car company to making amazing cars in about the same time frame. You tell me why.
What a joke, the "big 3" US auto makers are about bankrupt with little hope of profitability. GM is worth $1.7 billion with an annual loss of $38 billion. There is no hope no matter how much cash the Gov throws at them. Obama and the Dems appear to be puppets of corrupt labor unions and faulty businesses while trying to hide behind a fake image of helping the poor.
Simple. If a company can't make it on its own (AIG, GM...), then they go out of business. It basically tells us they are run by poor businessmen. Other smarter ones will probably take their place.
Manufacturing is still 10% of the workforce and the auto manufacturers are a nice chunk of that. It's not entirely fair to say that the automakers have been making the wrong cars. They've been big sellers overseas, particularly in Europe and Japan. GM makes the biggest fleet of ethanol cars for the Brazilian market. Ford makes a 60MPG car that they couldn't sell in the US due to regulations. GM and Toyota have been building cars together in the USA for years. All the automakers have a number of vehicles that are hybrids. GM has a lot of interests aside from autos. GMAC is one of those finance companies that took a big hit, and they bought H. Ross Perot's computer company a few years back... When I've shopped for cars in recent years, I've been put off by the low quality of the vehicles. On paper, there's nothing wrong with them, but when you touch the radio knobs and they feel like they could break off at any time, you wonder about the rest of the car as well. I chalk it up to using cheap materials to make up for the high cost of other things, including labor, regulation, and taxes. Toyota has built manufacturing plants here and many of those have closed due to such costs.
I guess I was very surprised to learn of it. Why not build the cars here and sell them to the Russians?
You pay $45/hour for the labor and then overtime if needed, here, plus taxes on everything, and then you have to pay to ship the car overseas.
Ya know, my first thought was that the unions would fight the notion of sending jobs to a communist country hammer & sickle. Then it dawned on me............ unions................communism...............no difference. Commrads in all.
Ought to be a law that any company we bail out has to immediately fire and re-hire it's entire upper management staff. Make them have to go through interviews just to get their jobs back, explaining why they weren't the incompetent fucks who ran the company into the ground. Broadcast the interviews on tv and let the American people vote the least convincing off the island. Then you take the winners and you force them to suck up to Donald Trump for a month, again on tv, before they get to go back to work. Would it be effective? Probably not. But I'd feel better.
I'd say they have to have a complete change in management and all executive salaries, bonuses... must be approved until the loan is paid back.
Pretty good commentary on this today by Thomas Friedman: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12friedman.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
Because they don't build the same cars for over there that they do here. They have different emissions and safety regulations. It is most likely, that they would not even be able to produce the vehicles here, that they do there due to those regulations. Secondly, everybody knows you avoid Tariffs if a certain amount of the vehicle is assembled in country. This saves them thousands of dollars to make parts elsewhere but assemble it in Russia.
So now we have to bail out the auto industry so they can send more jobs over seas? Bull shit. If they want bailout money, force them to shut down all oversea operations and bring every job back to the US. Same with AIG. Make them close their foreign offices and bring those jobs back over hear. If we are going to invest in these companies, we need to get assurances that they will invest in US jobs.
Oh, and we need to have Manchester United remove "AIG" off the front of their jersey's and put "USA". Boy, that would piss off the Limey's.
