There have been several of the Rivieras FWD that have been preserved here. Many spent time in garages as a 2nd or 3rd car and were only driven for travel or special occasions. I like that much better than the Aurora with the shortstar because of the 3800. Many of these cars have been owned by GM workers in this area. Some are being offered for sale. Just shows how well-made the UAW products have been.
imidazol97,
I thought the 3.5 "shortstar" was a good engine ???? I had a few family members and friends with this engine in their cars and none of them had any trouble and it appeared it was slightly more powerful than the 3800. I guess none of them kept their vehicles more than 4 or 5 years because they wanted something "new" but the 3.5 being a bad engine is news to me. I will admit I never kept up to date on it's issues thus that is why I kinda threw out some idea's for ya'll........
bumpy, I always thought the GEO Prism, was made in Japan ??? :surprise:
Good luck rocky, I hope you find a car, but more, I hope you find a job that suits your skills and desires...
Well my ex-wife to be I found out last week might be "playing dirty" and making the job that fits my skills and desires well almost impossible to land. Remember I held 2 previous national security clearances and when corporate does a preliminary background check and contacts the ex wife to be just what type of lies do you think she's telling them ???
They're hiring at the Georgia Kia plant...shall I send you an app???????
I don't want to work like a beaten slave, for peanuts !!!
Well if you look at the current UAW contract the answer should be yes they could and should be able to build small cars at a profit. The wages and benefits remember were slashed and burned last contract.
I applied at American Axel, last week but when I found out the starting wage for that plant in Three Rivers, was only $10 an/hr. :sick: I emailed the recruiter and canceled my pre-employment test. I couldn't afford the 70+ mile one-way drive with the price of gas.
I would think that National Security jobs would be plentiful. I know the Border Patrol is hiring around here. Maybe Border Patrol job on the MI & Canadian border. That should be a cushy security job. I think your wife would want to say nice things so you get a good job to pay LOTS of child support.
You do need to give up on the UAW. They are just a skeleton of their former self. It will have to get a lot worse before it gets better. Help IS NOT on the way from our Government. Unless you are a bank or brokerage firm. It will take more than you and fintail to start the revolution :shades:
I respectfully disagree. Given the full story, Americans will opt for UAW built autos. First of all we have this fixation that the Big Three are American companies. They are multi-nationals doing business all over the planet. Then we also try to blame the UAW for the miscalculations by the Big Three management. The Big Three and all other companies make choices as to what, where, when, to produce and bring to market. These are made regardless of the UAW and or any other labor force.
We as a country need to realize that the UAW/union movement is part of our fabric. Union or non union our parents/grand parents gave us something special. Representation and respect as a labor force which has created the biggest middle class in the history of the world. To not acknowledge their achievement would be foolish. The fact is that America is the number one consumer country on the planet and this was created by our consumer society/middle class. Our parents and grandparents didn't toot their horns enough. They toiled, suffered, and sweat-ed blood to make this world better for generations to come. For the most part these were descent hard working people who knew right from wrong. They didn't have to go to school and take ethics and or a host of modern day classes they offer in an attempt to instill moral turpitude. There is no way they would have willing, knowingly, and with little regard built a car which had the Ford Pinto concern of setting a human/humans on fire. These folks are a part of our legacy, which we should be proud of. Then too we need to see to it that the next generation of Americans have it as good if not better than the current.
The big corporations were never for the UAW and or organized labor as a bargaining unit. However, one could argue that they benefited as well. The consumer empowered with the ability to make buying decisions created the demand for goods and services, which allowed these corporations to expand/grow. They (the corporations) still make the calls and try to make the best product for the lowest price. These decisions make or break them, as well as their employees. Business decisions, demand for goods/services, marketing, and other factors are not a union decision.
Marketing is very likely to make or break a corporation. The best product at the lowest possible cost sounds better. But, thats wishful thinking in the real world. Examples could be, AOL is certainly not the best ISP (Internet service provider), however, they flooded the mail boxes of America with software and they are the largest ISP. Just try to change from AOL as an ISP and you can see that they have done a great job on making it not worth it. Then too, most knowledgeable folks would agree that the Apple was a superior computer, but PCs were marketed more aggressively. This list goes on of better marketing attaining a company the lions share in a market. So best doesn't always mean number one. We can only agree that the more choice/competition, the better for the consumer. Its wishful thinking that subsidies/lobbying aren't being used to gain market share or outright put competition out of business from overseas. All of this is business stuff which is beyond the UAWs control.
So if these large companies, who were never for unions and made the lives of our parents/grandparents difficult to say the least, want us to believe that the UAW and or organized labor is responsible for their failure. As a whole they were wrong then and are still wrong today. They lack the moral turpitude and credibility to be taken serious. Environmental crimes, child labor, and greed is their history. It should be noted that all this is going on today, in China. Public relations department and ethics training will never change their image much less their deeds. Thats not to say that many of todays moguls have no social conscience. Good folks like Soros, Buffet, and Gates are with us and the plight of the worker in modern day America. I feel the rebirth of the unions in America is near.
Lets make our grandparents/parents proud. We are (United States of America) the greatest civilization ever because of their efforts. Never ever allow the corporate world to disrespect their gift to us. Union were needed then and needed now. Just look over the border/ocean and look at life without a union.
Americans are continuing to opt out of UAW-built autos. Costs are way to high to compete. Therefore the new business model is without the UAW, I'm afraid.
It will be done through the future Ch. 11 proceedings at the end of next year from the looks of things.
The gift to everyone in the US will be world BEATING products. Still waiting on the auto front...
There was an article in the Saturday WSJ about GM and the current challenges. It talked about how the board had stuck with the current CEO even though GM has lost tens of billions since 2003, and how it looked like he was doing enough, but then the market tanked and oil went way up and now things are even worse than before.
On one hand it seems he's done a fairly decent job in making changes at GM, but has he been too tentative? Has he been trying to walk a fine line where, in retrospect, radical changes needed to be made even 3-5 years ago? Should he stay or go?
I went from thinking he should go about 3 years ago, to swaying over to maybe he's doing a good job, to now thinking maybe it's time. Contrast with Mullaly at Ford - an outsider, making radical changes. What should GM do now, and should it be with the current CEO or a new one, perhaps an outsider?
"why can't we tear down an Accord, a Camry, a 3 series and 5 series and simply reproduce their best attributes and add our own form of style and design???..."
For two reasons:
(1) They really can't. Not even BMW can produce a car as reliable as an Accord or Camry . . . nor Honda or Toyota produce a car as "cachet" as 3 or 5 series and still sell in the hundreds of thousands copies each. The big engineering challenge of a car company is indeed coming up with a car with a specific set of attributes at a certain price point. If you assume that can be accomplished just about by anyone, there wouldn't be car company worth its salt. It's a little like saying, why I can't I cook like the top chef after I buy all the same ingredients and build the gourmet kitchen?
(2) By the time the Accord/Camry is torn down, analyzed, and the production line for building these parts are built, Honda and Toyota will be selling their next generation Accord/Camry that is even better :-)
Daimler's fiasco with Chrysler proved both points. They didn't even have to tear down Mercedes cars, as the blueprints were provided within the company. There simply was no way to build a Mercedes using mercedes methods profitably at Chrysler's price; consumers were not interested in buying a Mercedes that falls apart like a Mercedes yet does not have a Mercedes logo on it. In a rapidly evolving industry like automaking, a successful mfr has to find out what the consumers want and make products cater to that need; copying is by definition a profit-reducing endeavor as the competition is already there before one's own product is ready.
Wagoner has been doing a decent job for the cards that he's dealt with when he got the CEO job. I have been staying with this position for the past 5+ years, despite all the critics of GM 3-5 years ago. GM is in far better shape than the other domestic carmakers. The key to GM's survival is how to unload the long term liabilities without political havoc, and how to grow their core business overseas where American brands are still valued. i.e. making cars in India and China, not even to sell to Americans, but to sell to Indians, Chinese and Russians! GM brands were shot with American consumers even before Wagoner took over. The same slab of iron can sell at higher prices with a Toyota or Honda logo stamped on it than with any of GM's logo's (excepting perhaps Cadillac and Saab) . . . the situation is not the same in India, China and Russia . . . The American connection still means something to them (hopefully the mortgage financing scam doesn't detroy that trust soon), that's where the American brands need to sell their cars. China is already the second largest car market in the world, and Russia just overtook Germany to become the largest car market in Europe. American brands are viable in both. Wagoner's GM has done a better job at expanding overseas (selling there, not necessarily even bothering with importing cars back to the US) than Ford and Chrysler. . . in fact better than Toyota and Honda in many of those fast-growing markets.
If you think that a Mickey Dee, Wally World job is going to allow the purchase of a new auto/home, your just not living in reality. I see no choice but to pay the UAW wages to reduce the after birth of the abuses of the sub prime lenders and their ill gotten gains. Fact is that the enormus inventory of homes has affected the price of everyones home. Not only are the Big Three hurting, but the non domestic is not setting record sales. If your waiting for the folks in China to bail you/us out by buying our housing, think again. It has also created a credit crunch/inflation which will also affect the private sector. All in the name of greed. A few in this housing industry have touched so many and they will enjoy the the ill gotten gains. By todays business standards, this group of folks in the mortgage industry are considered "no value added labor" and are excluded as "touch labor/value added". They make nothing whatsoever. They are not UAW. Most UAW are value added/touch labor. Thereby you will be paying for the greed of this mortgage industry and in return you will get nothing whatsoever.
I once worked for a colonel who'd address all obstacles by saying "you can solve any problem if you throw enough money at it." While our budget officer would have to breathe into a paper bag for a half hour afterwards, the colonel always managed to squeeze whatever was needed to resolve the crisis du jour from the budget– and solve the problem. Automakers native to the People's Republic of China (PRC) must have bugged his office; they've adopted the exact same philosophy.
Successfully implementing the "I'll buy what I need" strategy requires two things: 1) money and 2) knowing where to spend it. The Chinese automakers certainly meet criterion number one. The PRC is now the world's second largest auto market; auto sales are booming. The Chinese law requiring all foreign automakers to buddy-up with a domestic partner has delivered unto them an enormous financial windfall. Criterion two– locating mission critical knowledge and/or technology– is a no-brainer. While there have been auto factories in the PRC since the mid ‘50s, the Chinese auto industry discovered the technological benefits of the aforementioned joint ventures (JV) since A Flock of Seagulls first flew. For the last thirty years, Western JVs have been flooding the PRC with new automotive designs, products and processes. Initially, these JV partners used Chinese labor to assemble automobiles already in production elsewhere. The Chinese partners learned how to bolt together a car, but not much more. By the 1990s and early 2000s, the foreign partners had started designing models specifically for Chinese consumption, retooling their plants for full-scale manufacturing.
At this point, several "independent" Chinese auto manufacturers (i.e. companies not enmeshed in joint ventures) began leveraging their newfound carmaking skills to send in the clones: selling exact replicas of other manufacturer's models built for Chinese consumers.
Blinded by golden goosehood, stymied by laughable and unenforced Chinese copyright and trademark laws, GM, VW, Ford and others turned a blind eye to this sincerely flattering fraternal competition. Western automakers wrote it off as the cost of doing business in a military dictatorship. Besides, in China's burgeoning automotive market, there was– and is– plenty of pie for everyone! Of course, Chinese manufacturers had bigger plans
For the last decade of so, Chinese automakers have started eying foreign markets. As they dipped their entrepreneurial toes into Western climes, they realized they lacked competitive cars, and the engineering expertise to design them. Disastrous European crash testing literally drove the point home.
So Chinese automakers have started throwing money at European and North American automotive companies. Michael Laske, president of Austrian-based AVL China, says "The Chinese fundamentally lack products and knowledge, but they need to get into the market very quickly." And so AVL is banking big bucks, designing an entire engine line from the ground up to pop China's Chery.
Companies selling world class technology in so-called mature markets are falling all over themselves in their rush to cater to China's hunger for the best of the best. The list of successful sellers includes BorgWarner (turbochargers, clutches, transmissions), Sweden's Autoliv (safety systems), Austria's Magna Steyr (marketing strategy, legal requirements), Robert Bosch (diesel technology), Italdesign-Giugiaro and Pininfarina (design assistance) and A.T. Kearney (management consultants).
The joint venture partners are infusing their Chinese partners/competitors with cutting edge technology. GM has an engineering and design center in Shanghai, soon to be joined by a hybrid research center. To provide Chrysler with a small car for the U.S. market, Chrysler's engineers are tweaking every aspect of Chery's operations. So what happens next, once this technology transfer is bang up-to-date? China's domestic automakers will use their imported expertise to export cars abroad. Chery is already selling cars in Mexico; they've declared their intention to enter the U.S. market in the next two to three years. Chinese automakers will be out in force at this year's North American International Auto Show.
To further the cause of global export, the Chinese government is pushing their domestic auto makers to merge into a "Big Three" and a "Mini Three." Given the government's protectionist views, once the mergers and reorganizations are over, GM, VW, Toyota et al will find themselves out in the cold. Western manufacturers seem blissfully unaware of their own usurpation. They keep pouring money and engineering talent into China– even as the Chinese manufacturers are taking the first steps toward merging into megacompanies. Once again, western car companies are so blinded by the money they're making that they can't see the dangers lurking beyond the next quarter's bottom line.
But hey, that's the way the fortune cookie crumbles. If we don't do it, someone else will. Make hay while the sun shines. Pump and dump cuts both ways. That kind of thing. But any automaker that doesn't see China as a short term play, that stakes its long term financial future on the PRC, is headed for a rude awakening. Sooner rather than later.
Posted this on another forum but it looks like this UAW one is citing the same talk.
No easy, cheap fix for GM's problems
Losing a numbing $15.5 billion in one quarter, as General Motors Corp. confirmed Friday, is a sure-fire way to restart the wailing.
-Kill Buick and Pontiac.
-Euthanize Saab.
-Sue the directors.
-Dump Rick Wagoner, GM chairman through some of the most transformative (and bleak) times in the company's 100-year history.
-Blame the United Auto Workers and the clueless Detroit culture that didn't see $4-a-gallon gas coming (even if Japanese rivals Toyota and Nissan, the airlines and lots of others didn't, either).
However tempting some of these options may be -- and a few actually could happen -- the simple fact is that quick fixes for what ails GM right now aren't easy. Nor are they cheap for a company bleeding cash and trying to conserve every penny.
Soothe Wall Street? Its traders already have shown by their actions -- GM's market cap is a measly $5.79 billion compared with Toyota's $146.7 billion -- they believe the company to be essentially worthless despite its massive assets in the United States and its profitable operations overseas.
Force a company into shuttering brands? Doing so would be the automotive equivalent of the cure being worse than the disease by inviting a wave of litigation and requiring GM to write checks totaling at least a couple billion dollars to dealers protected by myriad state franchise laws.
Validate the critics who've assigned personal culpability to a complex series of business challenges, many of which cannot be controlled from atop the RenCen? Feed a press corps with the attention span of a kindergarten, which will then turn its attention to Bob Nardelli's meltdown at Chrysler LLC?
The point here is not to understate the gravity of GM's predicament because it is very grave. A company that burns cash at roughly the rate of $1 billion a month, reports a 30 percent drop in North American revenue in a single quarter, books a loss in its hot Asian operations and says its overriding objective is to maximize cash flow is a company that is fighting for survival.
I've covered GM for 12 years from three continents, seen its successes and failures, its smart moves (China and Korea), its less smart ones (Fiat) and a legit renaissance in the quality and looks of its cars and trucks. Through it all has been one constant: GM can't muster much of any momentum in its home market, and when things go wrong, they go really wrong.
The truth is that everyone in the business is getting whacked by record oil prices and the consumer's turn away from pickups and SUVs to smaller cars and crossovers. But no one is getting hit harder and destroying more shareholder value than GM, whose stock closed Friday at $10.23, down a staggering 76.3 percent from its 52-week high of $43.20 in October.
Is steering the General clear of federal bankruptcy court the only test of accountability for Wagoner & Co. -- beyond cutting bonuses, that is? GM's directors are scheduled to meet Monday evening and Tuesday, their first since June, in what is likely to be the first in a series of fairly dramatic board meetings over the next 60 to 90 days.
If GM's financials worsen, oil prices spike higher, credit conditions worsen, the automaker's cash hoard slips appreciably south of $20 billion and the company draws heavily on its revolving credit lines, pressure will intensify on the directors to act. It won't matter how broadly they may support Wagoner, President Fritz Henderson and their strategy.
That's business. That's how corporate directors can behave -- arguably must behave -- when sustainably crappy business results quickly merge fiduciary responsibility with personal liability and directors start showing up at board meetings with their lawyers in tow.
The more immediate question: What are you gonna' do about it, GM? It was telling that Henderson opened Friday morning's 90-minute conference call with a reprise of the automaker's two-week-old plan to raise $15 billion through $10 billion in "self-help" cost cutting and $5 billion in asset sales and financing.
"This is a game about rebuilding our revenue base," Henderson said. "It is what it is."
“To safeguard their image, the Chinese government would like to see a measured approach to the U.S. market,” Dunne said. “They know the Chinese economy has been surging because it makes lots of inexpensive consumer goods like toys, bicycles and microwave ovens en masse, but now they’d like to graduate to more sophisticated products, and they’re going to do that gradually and methodically, because there’s no need to rush and that’s how others have failed in the past.”
Chinese automakers hope to avoid repeating the mistakes of Korean and Japanese carmakers, which took many years to establish a reputation for quality.
"I don’t think the Chinese will be an overnight sensation over here,” he said. “Based on past history of other companies, the U.S. is a hard market to crack. And they know about the missteps other automakers made in the United States over the last 20 to 30 years, so they want to avoid that.”
Dunne also notes that Chinese brands enjoy significant advantages in China’s domestic market, which is far from saturation. They understand the local markets, and are largely protected from foreign competition by the ownership restrictions. Chinese carmakers also have opportunities in other global markets where there is less risk, like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“They can learn in these markets,” Dunne said. “They are gaining experience in these areas first, getting everything more settled before they enter the U.S. market. Some are saying they’ll start selling cars here in 2008, or in 2009, but I think 2010 is more realistic.”
The pre-1930's America was a great place because it had low taxation and regulation compared to the rest of the world. Yes, labor unions were big players in Europe even before the 20th century; high taxation and heavy regulation were common place in the rest of the world long before they became fashionable in the US. That's why Europeans (and other parts of the world too if they could pay the trave lfee) tried to immigrate to the US in droves, to escape the taxation and political burden that the rest of the world typically had.
1940's and 50's America was a better place to live than much of the rest of the world because the rest of the world was still recovering from the devastating WWII effects. Germany and Japan were already having much higher growth rate than the US by the late 50's and early 60's.
The post-1971 America is mostly stagnant compared to the rest of the world in terms of economic growth and improvement of standard of living.
Pre-1950's Americans did not know what consumerism was. American economy of the 1940's accounted for over one half of the entire world's production . . . compared to today's 1/8 to 1/4 depending on whether you go by exchange rate or perchanse parity. Yes, Americans were turning out more goods than the rest of the world combined in the 1920's,1930's and 40's! Americans had high standard of living not because they were consumers, but because they were great producers! American products were plentiful, cheap and had high to reasonably good quality. The rest of the world wanted American goods.
Henry Ford's production line method introduced in the mid-1910's reduced automobile price from $3000 range to eventually $200 by the 1920's. Not only numerous of competing car making companies were put out of business, so did numerous farms because tractors made farm productivity grow dramaticly and farm product prices plummetted. The losing carmakers did not have the luxury of lobbying The Justice Department to tie up Ford for years in anti-trust litigations. The farmers did not have a union to set farm product prices. Instead the losing farmers went to the factories and got factory jobs. The American job landscape transitioned from predominantly farmers to predominantly factory workers in little over 20 years . . . as tractors and combines displaced farm hands, and farming jobs in the Ohio River Vallue were exported to the midwest farm belt.
The nascent Federal Reserve did try to "help" the farmers by making cheap loans available non-competitive farmers (and taking a percentage of their income in the process). Manufacturers took advantage of the low interest rates too . . . eventually leading to the Forida land bubble of 1925 and stock market bubble of 1928. Farmers and manufacturers went bankrupt in droves as their addiction to ever expanding loans ran into natural limit, and the income they generated could not hope to satisfy the loan interest payment.
Hoover administration jumped in with both feet to "help" resolve the situation, and FDR's government went even further despite his campaign promise to scale back Hoover's counter-productive government committees on economic intervention. Wage reduction was essentially banned despite all goods and services going down in price . . . so those lucky enough to work for companies with monopolistic power kept their jobs and saw their purchasing power increase dramaticly, whereas those in competitive industries simply lost their jobs. The labor union was the mechanism through which wage protection in the face of general price decline was maintained. That's why labor unions were always founded in industries where there's some kind of "choke-hold" monopolistic power . . . where the workers were already paid higher than the average laborers, not industries where laborers were actually paid less than the average (kinda ironic considering the union rhetorics).
FDR administration also debased the currency dramaticly in order to keep the banks alive by avoiding further loan defaults. The missing amount between the original sound currency and the debased currency in loan payment will be subsequently paid back through massive government borrowing from the banks to fund war preparation and the war itself . . . individual depositors of course would see none of the difference back . . . but continued currency debasement instead for the next 70+ years.
This government inflation policy and the ability to print money at will transformed the economic landscape dramticly: while all companies are taxed in good times, only financial institutions are routinely bailed out by the government. It's a little like if everyone has to pay very high insurance premiums, but only SUV owners can collect payouts in accidents, would you drive anthing other than SUV's? That's the fundamental reason why manufacturing jobs in the US have been gradually replaced by financial jobs in the US in the last half century. In good times, a young engineer simply can not compete against a classmates who took the route of financial engineering . . . in bad times, the financial engineering firm gets bailed out, whereas the engineering firm not only doesn't get bail out but also have to foot the bill for paying the bailing out of the financial engineering firm. In other words, the young engineer not only was out bid by his classmate on the Maserati (if ever dreamed of), but also have to pay for the Maserati when the financial engineering classmate goes bankrupt! Any wonder why the brightest among our young are going into financial engineering instead of engineering?
This government intervention in the economy to bail out well connected firms also explain why executives get so much more pay than the average workers: the millions of dollars paid to a well-connected CEO would be cheap insurance indeed if that ensures that your company would get bailed out for billions of taxpayer money in troubled times. The government taxing power and discretionary regulatory power literally transfers money/power from the average person to those well-connected. In a pure socialist country, even money becomes unnecessary, as the big brothers get the goods and services that nobody in the society can buy with "money" at all.
Labor union unfortunately is part and parcel of this dog-and-pony show that has brought down America to where it is today, through the destruction of the competitive landscape that had existed previously. Printing more money does not equate to wealth. Consumer economy is a joke without production first. Productivity is what makes consumption possible. Labor union gets in the way of productivity. Union members not threatenedby dismissal and not having their income tied to individual productivity has no directly incentive to be productive. Union bosses do not produce anything, nor do any of the government labor relationship bureacrats . . . or any other burea
Technology and know-how is not a static item. Whatever automotive technology that a company has now will be worth approximately zero two decades from now. Technological improvement is a continuous process. Sure, the Soviet Union eventually froze out Ford and GM after acquiring their technologies in the 1920's-40's . . . that's why they were still building the Lada in the 1980s, a car that embodies the best of 1950's automotive engineering, and worth literally less than the steel and leather going into making it by the late 1980's!
Ironicly, the Chinese are finally clueing up to the fact that all the trillions of IOU's that they have acquired from the US over the past three decades can quickly become IOU-nothing!
In good times, a young engineer making $80k a year simply can not compete against a classmates who took the route of financial engineering . . . in bad times, the financial engineering firm gets bailed out, whereas the engineering firm not only doesn't get bail out but also have to foot the bill for paying the bailing out of the financial engineering firm. In other words, the young engineer not only was out bid by his classmate on the Maserati (if ever dreamed of), but also have to pay for the Maserati when the financial engineering classmate goes bankrupt! Any wonder why the brightest among our young are going into financial engineering instead of engineering?
Thats a thing of the recent past. We now know that the Reagan deregulation of the 80s led banks into the brokerage business which has all but bankrupt them. Then too its silly to think that these so called finance engineers could ever do the demanding math in the real engineering Dept's. Thats why there is math for non engineering/science majors. This added to the fact that 70% of the student bodies are in the business schools. Many change their major, soon as they can't do the demanding courses, to something other than engineering/science. Only the most capable of the business student body even sits in to attempt the CPA certification.
Pre-1950's Americans did not know what consumerism was. American economy of the 1940's accounted for over one half of the entire world's production . . . compared to today's 1/8 to 1/4 depending on whether you go by exchange rate or perchanse parity. Yes, Americans were turning out more goods than the rest of the world combined in the 1920's,1930's and 40's! Americans had high standard of living not because they were consumers, but because they were great producers! American products were plentiful, cheap and had high to reasonably good quality. The rest of the world wanted American goods.
And exactly what were Americans, the number one consumer nation, buying? Americans fueled the economy via a thing called the multiplier effect. Demand for autos, televisions, homes..... We are all aware that an industrial revolution transformed America from an agrarian society into an industrial society. Hence, unions came into being. Unions are people, the people who voted them in to have their voice heard. There was a time when big business lobbied to make organizing illegal. The Wagner Act made organizing legal.
Henry Ford's production line method introduced in the mid-1910's reduced automobile price from $3 range to eventually $2000 by the 1920's. Not only numerous of competing car making companies were put out of business, so did numerous farms because tractors made farm productivity grow dramaticly and farm product prices plummetted. The losing carmakers did not have the luxury of lobbying The Justice Department to tie up Ford for years in anti-trust litigations. The farmers did not have a union to set farm product prices. Instead the losing farmers went to the factories and got factory jobs. The American job landscape transitioned from predominantly farmers to predominantly factory workers in little over 20 years . . . as tractors and combines displaced farm hands, and farming jobs in the Ohio River Vallue were exported to the midwest farm belt.
Eugene Debs was prosecuted under the Sherman Act and ran from prison for president of the United States from prison. He was a union man and these companies managed to lobby his persecution. First continental congress commissioned Eli Whitney to make interchangeable rifle parts. Without interchangeable parts no assembly line would be possible.
Consumer economy is a joke without production first. Productivity is what makes consumption possible.
Thats my point that the value added/touch labor are UAW employees. Unlike the financial engineer you mention. To say that the hard working folks in these unions don't buy things which further fuels the economy is just not real. They make actual product which is tangible and sold to consumers.
We have some common ground. The last 7 years the technology has surpassed the last 70 years in the auto industry. The point is that if China opts to dump, thats an economic term, other auto makers will cease to be in business. Dumping is illegal, just as Walmart going into communities and cutting prices to the point that they aren't making a profit, just to shut down the mom & pop stores. After the mom & pop are out of business Walmart would have no problem dictating price.
In order to keep buyers in the housing market the FED chose to lower interest rates. Each increment they raise rates is that many fewer buyers for the homes. However, by lowering interest rates they not only fuel demand, but stir up inflation. Inflation is by definition, too many dollars following too few goods. Thereby prices increase as the rationing mechanism. And yes our currency decreased as opposed to the EURO, Swiss Franc, and so forth. Unfortunately China decided to invest in the dollar and got burned. However, if we go into a recession, we would buy fewer of their goods at Walmart and therefore they are trapped between in an unfortunate enigma. All this is the aftermath of the sub prime mortgage abuse by greedy housing industry. The govt ought to demand they give back the five years plus of record profits prior to the bubble bursting.
We can look at American airlines and their ability to get the unions to agree on concessions in prior years. Then they had to down size regardless this year. So therefore, the workers are doomed either way because of the indolent management. The UAW had a vision and therefore represented its members well. You give them money and they still run the business into the ground. KUDOs to the UAW.
The UAW has built the 2008 Car of the Year. Its called the Cadillac CTS. I've driven it and it is pricey, but I'm worth it. But its light years beyond those you have mentioned. Performance, handling, and the BOSE too. Looks do kill and this is a total babe magnet.
"To say that the hard working folks in these unions don't buy things which further fuels the economy is just not real. "
Consumption does not "fuel" the economy unless you mean burning it down! Work only has value to others and the economy to the extent that a free market place would price it (personal enjoyment does not have a value to others).
Mohammed Atta redirected two planes . . . and the rebuilding effort is going to result in a lot of consumption . . . yes the GDP will count the rebuilding as economic activity, but anyone with a modicum of common sense understand that the massive destruction and rebuilding is not economic growth. If Mohamed Atta had been an evil genius and did all the "hard work" to build a nuclear bomb, subsequently blowing up a city . . . which necessitating the rebuilding of the entire city from ashes instead of "only" two buildings . . . the economy would have been hurt even more, not improved, despite what the government statistics would say about GDP as a consequence.
All of Atta's "hard work" had negative value regardless how hard he worked. If he consumed more while living on top the "consumption" that his destruction brought, he would have been an even bigger drain on the economy.
The inability to distinguish consumption vs. economy (which should really be productivity valued by the market place) is behind much of the 20th century misery, including all the wars to stimulate the economy and government subsidies and programs to do the same. There is nothing to be proud of to be a consumer . . . any idiot can consume. The faulty caculation of giving workers more money than the market place would pay for such labor so that they can go consume and engage "the multiplier effect" inevitably leads the next logical step: namely, the work that the person does is quite immaterial, why not just give money to anyone, so they can spend it to engage "the multiplier effect"? The real multier effect that ends up getting engaged of course was the fractional-reserve fiat money creation, through ever expanding government debt . . . that what led to the whole sale replacement of US manufacturing by financial engineering. The amount that a factory worker gets paid for his labor at rates supported by a free market is the result of manufacturing economy; any amount beyond that is the result of a financial transfer, from other participants of the economy to the specially privileged worker . . . once that element of financial engineering is introduced, the flood gate is open to further financial engineering that goes out to support that other participants of the economy that just got ripped off for buying a car that cost more than it's worth . . . so on and so forth . . . multiplying effect indeed . . . until the whole economy is enslaved by the bankers doing those adjustments while taking a cut in the process.
Bankers owning the economy and running it to the ground did not start in the 80's, or 1880's, or 1780's. It's as old as the mid-ages if not Roman times. It's always the bankers helping the government messing with people's lives in the name of "useful things" or "common good."
Collective price setting is illegal in any industry, and anathama to any competitive market place. Not sure why "collective bargaining" should be treated differently. Frankly, I'm even willing to go so far as allowing people to collude in price for labor and goods . . . but nobody should be allowed to use baseball bats or even a picket line to physically threaten anyone ignoring such price collusions. Mafias vote too, but the result of their voting is not binding to non-members.
Not sure why you brought up Eugene Debs; he did not run under the Democratic Party; his nomination was under "Socialist Democrat," a fringe Marxist party.
Not sure why you brought up Eli Whitney either. Production line came to Henry Ford as an inspiration after seeing a meat processor in Cincinnati. In any case, "production line" idea must have occured in human history numerous times, just like "discovering the Americas." Ford just happened to be the right men at the right time when all the other elements were ready for rapid growth. I don't think Ford would have gone very far in today's high tax and high regulation world.
"Thats my point that the value added/touch labor are UAW employees. Unlike the financial engineer you mention. To say that the hard working folks in these unions don't buy things which further fuels the economy is just not real. They make actual product which is tangible and sold to consumers. "
I will repeat my point: any pay UAW workers receive beyond what the free market place would have given is the result of financial engineering. How is the union boss' pay for being the union boss any "touch labor"? Touch people with baseball bats or bullets? If you want to limit line workers' pay to that which would have been given in a free market place anyway for their labor, there is no point of having a union now, is there? If you want argue that their increased pay is good because then they can go buy things, then why don't we have 10 people getting paid the same for every single UAW worker that actually makes anything? Doesn't that lead to even more money sloshing around? As you can see, anything beyond what the free market place would have paid is pure and unadulterated financial engineering. . . without commesurate production, all that's "multiplied" is in effect debt, not wealth. Debt masquarading as wealth is the fundamental reason behind our nation's current economic woes.
While CTS is a decent car, "Car of the year" is as much as politics as anything else. MT has a soft spot for underdogs in tough times: Chrysler 300 in 2005, PT Cruiser in 2001, 300M in 1999, Chevy Malibu in 1997, Dodge Caravan in 1996, Ford Probe in 1993, STS in 1992, Caprice in 1991, Towncar in1990, AMC Alliance in 1983 . . . Do you see Lexus LS or BMW 3 series in there? Two of the most successful lines in the last 30 years. COY did not acknowledge Camry and Civic until 2007 and 2006 . . . frankly I'm now wondering about the future prospects of the two. LOL
Performance, handling and Bose are not what will save GM or UAW unless GM wants to become the size of BMW or Porsche, and UAW wants to see its membership cut by another 90%. GM never had difficulty building expensive vehicles.
"The govt ought to demand they give back the five years plus of record profits prior to the bubble bursting. "
Yup, we certainly have common grounds there! The very fact that the FED adjust interest rate according to the needs of the financial industry is what's been causing the replacement of manufacturing industry in favor of the financial industry. If I set up a game where heads I win tail you lose, would you play?
" After the mom & pop are out of business Walmart would have no problem dictating price. "
As soon as Walmart raises price, Target will open on the next block arbitrarging profit margin :-) Walmart's primary advantage is its efficient distribution system. So far I have not seen Walmart indulge in the kind of behavior that old John D. Rockefeller was accused of doing (i.e. raising price sky high afterwards). I'm all for competitions, which is why IMHO there shouldn't be laws protecting imcumbents. Retailers come and go every generation or so as they grow from lean-and-mean to old-and-fat: Woolworth, JCPenny, Sears, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Overstock.com, etc..
Americans are continuing to opt out of UAW-built autos. Costs are way to high to compete. Therefore the new business model is without the UAW, I'm afraid.
Where do you get your facts?? Toyota's wages are about on par w/ that of the UAW, and Nissan just offered a couple thousand employees 6 FIGURE buyouts.
BTW local ad's around here show $20,000 Camry's selling for $16,000, while $21,000 Malibu's are selling for just over $18,000. So, based on a good product, the market dictates a better price for the Malibu than the Camry. Even a comparably equipped Impala is selling for only $2-300 more than a Malibu, which should show that the newer and "hipper" Malibu is a car the people want.
Nope, the Prizm was NUMMI start to finish. Being the GM version of the Corolla, it got a cheaper battery and radio and had to get by without the front swaybar.
The Shortstar is as good as the Northstar it came from (take that as you like), and seems to be a decent mill for a wrong-angle DOHC V6.
Consumption does not "fuel" the economy unless you mean burning it down! Work only has value to others and the economy to the extent that a free market place would price it (personal enjoyment does not have a value to others).
So you don't think that tax rebates work? The stimulus check was given to Americans because GW wanted to be remembered as a kind president?
Mohammed Atta redirected two planes . . . and the rebuilding effort is going to result in a lot of consumption . . . yes the GDP will count the rebuilding as economic activity, but anyone with a modicum of common sense understand that the massive destruction and rebuilding is not economic growth. If Mohamed Atta had been an evil genius and did all the "hard work" to build a nuclear bomb, subsequently blowing up a city . . . which necessitating the rebuilding of the entire city from ashes instead of "only" two buildings . . . the economy would have been hurt even more, not improved, despite what the government statistics would say about GDP as a consequence.
You fail to factor in the multiplier effect of the wages paid to materials, construction, jet aircraft replacement, and the list goes on. These firms will have to add labor to produce the same buildings. When these folks spend these wages, they will create further demand. Cars, boats, homes, children, and a host of positive externalities.
A smart man would think that Atta could have caused more damage if would have targeted the oil refiners. However, Atta is far from a MENSA membership.
Bankers owning the economy and running it to the ground did not start in the 80's, or 1880's, or 1780's. It's as old as the mid-ages if not Roman times. It's always the bankers helping the government messing with people's lives in the name of "useful things" or "common good."
The CEO and board at Bear Sterns opted not allow redemptions in their hedge fund. They went as far as not to even acknowledge the shareholders at their quarterly meeting. Ignoring these wealthy folks and not fielding their questions. they paid dearly with gold mine being shut down. Never ever under estimate the power of hedge fund investors.
Banks and insurance companies are about as close to a sure thing as you will ever get. Actuarial tables and creating money is beyond having GOD powers. Reagan started the deregulation and they started acting like brokerage houses. If there was ever a case for capital punishment, we have been seeing them. There is no deterrent to ENRON and the likes. Public relations departments and teaching ethics in colleges/universities isn't going to stop the calculated crimes.
Eugene Debs
He was seen as a anti trust threat. This is the power the robber barons had back then. The law created to stop consolidation of power/wealth/collusion was used against a union wheel. You were mentioning that auto makers were unable to get the govt to enforce the Sherman anti trust Act. Where does it cost any firm to enforce the law of the land?
Eli Whitney
Without interchangeable parts the assembly line is worthless. Eli was the first machinist and inventor of the cotton gin. He would absolutely have been UAW. Ford was not any great inventor but rather a pathetic soul. The assembly line is a no brainier.
I will repeat my point: any pay UAW workers receive beyond what the free market place would have given is the result of financial engineering. How is the union boss' pay for being the union boss any "touch labor"? Touch people with baseball bats or bullets? If you want to limit line workers' pay to that which would have been given in a free market place anyway for their labor, there is no point of having a union now, is there? If you want argue that their increased pay is good because then they can go buy things, then why don't we have 10 people getting paid the same for every single UAW worker that actually makes anything? Doesn't that lead to even more money sloshing around? As you can see, anything beyond what the free market place would have paid is pure and unadulterated financial engineering. . . without commesurate production, all that's "multiplied" is in effect debt, not wealth. Debt masquarading as wealth is the fundamental reason behind our nation's current economic woes.
If you say that the union job pays more. So then it reasonable to assume that all the qualified workers will compete to get hired by the union shop. Hence, the cream of the crop will work at the best paying job. Its good to know that the skills and abilities of the UAW union worker are superior to those of the non union market rate job. Microsoft and Google offer above par wages in exchange for a workers services. Therefore, they get a superior employee aka the cream of the crop.
You should know that in a free exchange of goods or services, both parties are happy and or feel an advantage in this economic free exchange. If the a company sits down at the table with the UAW and no one is twisting their arm and holding a gun to their head. Then they sign a collective bargaining agreement. Both parties saw value in getting into the agreement and therefore signed. It doesn't get any more capitalist than this. The Wagner Act makes this legal and shouldn't be confused with price fixing an anti trust violation. You just don't think that labor should have a representation. If you look at the sports stars, they have agents to do this specialize task. It works and baseball, football, basketball, or hockey haven't gone out of business. Who represents the corporate entity? Specialized people do, because we know that the company isn't its stockholders, but rather a separate entity. The UAW is the membership and not some dummy charter to limit liability.
The ShortStar is a 4.0 V8 used in the Auroras based on the NorthStar. But in research I found the V6 3.5 is also called ShortStar. But I was talking about the V8 and may have a wrong nickname for it.
In either case I was talking about the V8. It's really packed in there. I'd prefer the 3800 with a supercharger for my pick and that's what I suggested to Rockylee.
Your absolutely right. Capitalism is getting bailed out these days. You could see it coming. Arenas/stadiums for the wealthy millionaires/billionaires, CEO compensation abuse, trading with an oppressive communist country, and no outrage about the welfare for the well to do. The risk/reward system is not there. With the media and govt in their pocket there is no shame to this leisure class/idle rich being on the public dole.
The compassionate conservative is nothing but when it comes to outsourcing our jobs. One can see nothing but greed. Exploiting child labor, polluting the environment, and crimes against humanity is their forte. They are friends with the communist they vilified during the cold war. The same ideology many of our young boys/girls died for is now no longer evil.
Of course the "stimulation checks" don't work. All it does is destroying the value of the dollar. How can it possibly help the real standard of living? The government doesn't provide any real service or good in printing those "stimulation checks." If the scheme could work, shouldn't counterfeiters who print up millions of fake dollars be praised as national heroes instead of being criminals? All the "stimulation checks" printing did was wasting thousands of man-hours printing them, wasting good trees and ink in the process. More money now chase the same amount of goods, so prices go up . . . people can actually buy less than before because the man-hours, trees, ink and gasoline for delivering those checks and material are wasted.
Your argument that Atta's terrorist attack stimulated the economy just goes to show how absurd this whole "government stimulation" logic is. We are talking about real mass murderers and whole sale destruction of property in that instance.
Fractional Reserve Banking is intrisicly insolvent whenever there is a run on the bank. The bank is promising all depositors/creditors that their demand deposit/short-term funds are available on demand, yet 95-98%% of the money is actually loaned out and not in the bank. If more than 2-5% of the people want their money at the same day, the bank is instantly insolvent . . . because the original promise is a lie to begin with. As such, any and all Wall Street banks are exposed to the kind of risk that Bear Stern was. Bear Stern was simply marked for destruction by other wall street firms when a whole sale bail out of the whole industry was required after the mortgage lending implosion. Why Bear Stern was picked? Because it refused to play ball at the LTCM bailout back in 1998. Read it up.
"You were mentioning that auto makers were unable to get the govt to enforce the Sherman anti trust Act. Where does it cost any firm to enforce the law of the land? "
Not sure what you are saying. Remember, rule of law was supposed to be what tax payment buys? The Eugene Debs' strikes were in effect violently expropriating property owners of their rightful properties.
"Without interchangeable parts the assembly line is worthless. Eli was the first machinist and inventor of the cotton gin. He would absolutely have been UAW. Ford was not any great inventor but rather a pathetic soul. The assembly line is a no brainier. "
So is interchangeable parts. My 12yr old cousin recognized the advantage of interchangeable parts when he was making mail boxes to earn pocket money. Comes to think of it, isn't Gutenberg's printing process built on the principle of interchangeable letters? That was almost 400 years old when Eli was making his muskets. Eli's primary fortune came from government contracts obtained through personal contacts, his armory was literally the equivalent of Haliburton of his time; his cotton gin prolonged slavery. If you insist he would have been a UAW man . . .
"If you say that the union job pays more. So then it reasonable to assume that all the qualified workers will compete to get hired by the union shop. Hence, the cream of the crop will work at the best paying job. Its good to know that the skills and abilities of the UAW union worker are superior to those of the non union market rate job. Microsoft and Google offer above par wages in exchange for a workers services. Therefore, they get a superior employee aka the cream of the crop. "
In case it's not obvious, MSFT has been losing talent left and right for the last 8 years! People with talent do not want to work for places where advancement is slow and future is tied in bureacratic quagmire. People can be untalented and overpaid at the same time: in fact, they are usually attracted institutions that guaratee a certain level of pay in complete disregard to productivity, such as union jobs.
" You should know that in a free exchange of goods or services, both parties are happy and or feel an advantage in this economic free exchange. If the a company sits down at the table with the UAW and no one is twisting their arm and holding a gun to their head."
What do you think strikes, picket lines, beating up of replacement workers and plant occupations are? Labor unions wouldn't survive a day if the employer is free to replace them with other workers who want to work. That's exactly what happened to the air traffic controller's union. Labor Union exist because FDR decided that a particular form of outright robbery was legal because union bosses were making political contributions and rounding up votes for FDR.
I agree that, thanks to the unions in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, WHEN THE UNION WAS NEEDED, the great American middle class was born...
My beef with UAW people is whn a door is held together by one bolt, and they left off the other 3 or 4...or a window motor was not engaged so the window does not go up or down...or the door handle ring was not installed so the door handle comes off...or, what happened to me, the dashboard was not aligned into the body track, so the dash literally was 2-3 inches higher on the passenger side than the drivers side...this is not poor management, this is shoddy workmanship directly the result of the person on the line...and those people took months (up to 2 years) of hearings and appeals to get the incompetent off the line, meanwhile that idiot stayed on the line making junk...the union existed to keep the worthless idiots on the line, whereas if that same idiot was down here he would be fired in a day after his one written warning...
For that, I only blame the UAW...they did not design the junk, that was management, but they are the ones who literally made the product INTO junk by their lousy work habits that were supported by their fellow workers in the union...
Previous poster: " So then it reasonable to assume that all the qualified workers will compete to get hired by the union shop"...sorry, there is no way that statement makes any sense at all...when Lee Iaccoca complained that too many of his workers were illiterate, don't tell me that the best workers competed for the jobs...not with the junk they were putting out for years, that statement is almost laughable...
No one can seriously use the words "union labor" and "superior quality" in the same sentence when describing Big 3 products from 1970 to 2000-plus...
"but doesn't the concept of free market contradict this when a company, in the name of raking in more profits, sends jobs overseas, putting Americans out of work??? "
"Capitalism is getting bailed out these days."
These two problems are inter-related. When government place heavy taxation and regulation on all companies, yet only bail out financial companies, investors naturally switch from manufacturing industry to financial industry . . . because the latter is what the government in effect promotes.
What was happening for the past few decades in the US wasn't sending jobs overseas per se, as unemployment was the lowest on record until the current down turn. It was a whole sale replacement of manufacturing by financing. It was the inevitable result of socialistic bailouts of the financial industry. There is nothing capitalistic or free market about those bailouts. Government favoritism based on personal connections is the hall mark of socialism.
"I agree that, thanks to the unions in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, WHEN THE UNION WAS NEEDED, the great American middle class was born... "
I don't blame you. That's the sort of brainwashing that passes for public education by members of the teachers' unions. America was a society of middle class since the days of Thomas Jefferson! That's why massive numbers of Europeans wanted to immigrate to America throughout the American history, until the 1970's. In terms of the number of hours that an American car factory worker had to work in order to afford one of the car that he makes, American workers were paid 5-10 times as much as his German counterpart in the 1920's. That's before UAW took over the American car industry.
Unions were never necessary. They were formed in industries that had the highest pays at the time. No, it wasn't the child laborers or the women workers who formed unions. Unions were formed in the highest paid industries: automaking, steel, oil, etc.. The goal was to exclude children, women, immigrants and other Americans who wanted high paying jobs from ever competing with incumbent highly paid workers. That's always what price collusion means . . . ever since the days of medieval trade guilds: limiting supply to benefit incumbent producers.
In terms of what labor unions have done for American people, it's a terrible deal. Labor unions transformed what had been American productivity centers (the private enterprises) into government-corporate partnerships. In the 1920's, 30's, 40's and early 50's, a car cost about 400hrs of an average worker's labor, and a house cost about 2000hrs. Today, a car cost an average worker 2000 hrs of labor, and a house 20,000 hours! Why is it taking 5-10 times as much of a worker's labor to get a car and a house? Because all those non-productive and counter-productive bureacrats, officials, union bosses and union lawyers have to take their share of the fruit of your labor before you can partake in your own! You see, in order to maintain union labor price fixing and prevent bank loan default (as companies would if their products went down in price due to competition and technology advancement but could't adjust labor cost accordingly, remember Ford's production line reduced average car price from $3000 to $200!), price decline had to be prevented by the government . . . fiat money had to be introduced to create constant inflation. When that happened, it became intuitively obvious that the government officials can get whatever it wanted by in effect counterfeiting its "legal tender." The "legal tender" is given to government officials and bureacrats first, then favored constituents such as labor relation experts and union bosses . . . since actual producers of goods are required by law to accept the "legal tender" in exchange for their real goods and services, they will just have less goods left over for you the average American. That's why you are working 5-10 times as many hours to get a car or a house, compared to the number of hours required before labor unions and big government took over America. It's literally the destruction of American middle class that existed since the days of the founding of the Republic.
No one can seriously use the words "union labor" and "superior quality" in the same sentence when describing Big 3 products from 1970 to 2000-plus...
Oh I see the economic laws work only when they support your rhetoric. Please bombard me some logic. I can't understand what your doing wasting time here among-st the lowly UAW.
So who exactly did the air traffic controllers beat up? In the same paragraph you contend that force/coercion is used. Prior, eons ago this was the practice. Just as the steel mills worked a man 364 days a year and his family could only count on the almshouse if something were to happen to their wage earner. I suppose you would like us to go back to the Dark Ages?
Thats almost comical that Microsoft is losing talent and that they have little advancement. The first group of Microsoft employees are well off. Also that the free market forces don't work in the employment arena is news to me. You might cion this Pseudo Economics.
In any case sign that stimulation check and mail it to me (being that its worthless paper). Also tell your cousin that Texans like to bash mailboxes, when were not tipping cows. We bash'em if they aren't UAW made.
First of all. The govt doesn't send the jobs overseas, the multi-nationals corporations do. China demands JOBS, its their only metric. They better do it, otherwise they will be denied entry into the biggest future consumer countries markets in the history of the world. They wanted Big Mac's and McDonald's provided them stat!!! Before this is over you will be eating the rice that they have had to endure all these years. They want steak, no more gruel.
Thats almost comical that Microsoft is losing talent and that they have little advancement.
Bill Gates did just appear before Congress and asked them to loosen the requirements for immigration of Engineers. I don't know if he is under paying his and they are going to other companies.
The Air Traffic Controllers shut the countries air travel down. I was glad Reagan did what he did. They could have gone back to work and settled their differences. They felt it was better to destroy their Union than to give into the President's demand. That was JUST PLAIN STUPID. They got what they deserved. I personally do not want to live in a country like France where the services get shut down by strikes every other day. I was 37 years a Teamster in Alaska. We never went on strike. We had good contracts from the beginning. We knew what the job was worth and that is what we asked for. When a Union asks for more than the job is worth they are headed for trouble. The UAW and the greed of its members have brought much of the current problems on themselves. For me these last GM strikes at the few locations building profitable vehicles, showed me that the UAW has no interest in keeping GM alive. You cannot blame those strikes on anyone but the UAW and its goon bosses.
We bash'em if they aren't UAW made.
That is the mentality of the UAW that is projected to the rest of the Country. Americans will not have any sympathy when the doors at GM are padlocked and the Union goes bust. The UAW has brought the problems on themselves. GM and Ford may have lousy management. That should be obvious by the Union contracts they signed in the 1998 strike. That was the time to lock out the Union and give them the straight scoop. We cannot afford to pay more than the competitors. PERIOD.
"So who exactly did the air traffic controllers beat up?"
They didn't, therefore the union for all purpose ceased to funciton when the members were laid off. Like I said, unions survive and thrive on the use of violence and the threat thereof. For most public worker's union, the violence and threat thereof comes from forcible tax collection. With the obvious exception in that air traffic controllers union strike case, Government negotiators often collude with the unions because it's not the government officials' own money.
On the steelworker unions, you are reading entirely too much propaganda. If the steel mills work conditions and pay were not far superior to what existed back then in the general economy (yes, teenagers worked dawn to dusk picking potatoes in the field, for their loving parents! That's how people lived before the automobile age), they could leave the plant at any time they wanted. Read up on Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers' history. It was full of violent plant seizures. The union memberss deployed not only personal firearms but canons!
"Thats almost comical that Microsoft is losing talent and that they have little advancement. The first group of Microsoft employees are well off. Also that the free market forces don't work in the employment arena is news to me. You might cion this Pseudo Economics. "
What are you talking about? The first generation of MSFT employees were entreprenuers; most of today's job applicants at Microsft are careerists. That happens in the life cycle of most companies. Do you think people applying jobs at HP today, with $200k student loans on their backs, are the same kind of people that worked in Dave Packard's garage? You seem to be quite out of touch with how reality works.
"In any case sign that stimulation check and mail it to me (being that its worthless paper). "
Sorry, only the government are legally allowed to counterfeit money. If I were to sign a check, I have to have real savings backing it. I can not borrow in your name, for example, unlike the government. Yes, how do you like that? borrow $100 billion in your name, waste a chunk of it printing and delivering funny papers, then have the bank friends collect a per centage on that borrowed money for perpetuity . . . to be paid every year with your tax money. Still like your "stimulous" check? If you do, you'd like the bondage of serfdom/slavery even better.
"Also tell your cousin that Texans like to bash mailboxes, when were not tipping cows. We bash'em if they aren't UAW made."
Is that some sort of economic stimulation plan? (for more replacement mailbox production). Do you guys take turns burning each other's houses down too as part of the economic stimulation plan? BTW, I always thought that Texans were a more self-reliant bunch, and had a better sense of what real money is.
What are you talking about? It's not like they take down a McD's in the US, and transplant it to China. BTW, McD's are not as popular in China as KFC; Chinese apparently like Chicken better than beef. Go figure. Apparently, the Chinese are not turned off by the big old whiteman's face. Sometimes I do wonder though how many of those Chinese customers confuse the Colonel with Uncle Sam. Average Chinese actually like American brands. . . selling them brands in exchange for real goods may not be a bad idea paying down our trade deficit and accummulated debt . . . just like the brands sold to Japanese in the early 90's.
Corporations become multi-nationals only after they have overseas operations; dah! Not sure why it's a bad thing for KFC or McD's to collect franchise fee from selling Chinese chicken to Chinese or American beef to Chinese, all for a handsome profit. If private American companies can provide for Chinese consumers a level of confidence in food safety that the 200,000+ person Chinese FDA can not provide, all the more power to the private enterprise and personal freedom! Perhaps some day, the government intervention-loving (the socalled "asian value") average Chinese may even wake up and decide to disband their FDA.
Rice is actually more expensive than wheat on the international market, much more expensive than corn. Some varieties (like basmati) are getting more expensive than chicken wings per pound lately. Indian and Chinese economies had been ruined by socialist policies of unwarranted wage support for favored groups that could not justify their pay in the free market. It's for the good of humanity that they are transforming into western style free market economies. If we embraced their old abandoned socialist policies now, we would deserve nothing more than gruel like they once did.
I can confirm how much the Chinese love KFC by how often the Chinese post-docs down the hall ate there for lunch. Buick is the number one brand of car in China, last I read.
My uncle in Florida is a hardcore union man and always goes around bad-mouthing Republicans and conservatives as being responsible for the country's ills with rhetoric that sounds as though it came out of a "wobblies" meeting or the mouths of Eugene V. Debs or Gus Hall. Of course, I should note he was a machinist for Eastern Airlines and an IAM member and we know what happened to Eastern after their strike. At least he got a job working to fix the rides at Disney World, since he was actually skilled labor.
We can look at American airlines and their ability to get the unions to agree on concessions in prior years. Then they had to down size regardless this year. So therefore, the workers are doomed either way because of the indolent management. The UAW had a vision and therefore represented its members well. You give them money and they still run the business into the ground. KUDOs to the UAW.
Very well said dallasdude1 !!! The UAW freed up billions to the automakers by agreeing to all these concessions and they still ran the ship into the iceberg.
I don't know what to think any more ??? I saw on insideline the next cobalt replacement that is suppose to get 40 mpg but GM, isn't going to give it IRS ???? :surprise: That's the type of example I'm talking about !!!! :sick:
I would think that National Security jobs would be plentiful. I know the Border Patrol is hiring around here. Maybe Border Patrol job on the MI & Canadian border. That should be a cushy security job. I think your wife would want to say nice things so you get a good job to pay LOTS of child support.
My wife honestly has real mental problems gagrice, and she would do anything to keep me down. She literally went through $75K in cash and left me about $35K in debt. Stole around $20 grand from her wealthy father while blaming it on his girlfriend thus that should explain a lot. But yeah buddy one would think she'd want me to get a great job but my inside source says otherwise because I'd be able to challenge her. FYI, I applied for a job back in Texas, tonight....
You do need to give up on the UAW. They are just a skeleton of their former self. It will have to get a lot worse before it gets better. Help IS NOT on the way from our Government. Unless you are a bank or brokerage firm. It will take more than you and fintail to start the revolution
The UAW, is finished unless Barack Obama, passes the freedom of choice act while in office, kills NAFTA, implements tarriffs on shoddy chinese made imports.
I think Mr. Fintail, Mr. Lemko, Mr. Dallasdude1, I, could form a coup !!! :P
Americans are continuing to opt out of UAW-built autos. Costs are way to high to compete. Therefore the new business model is without the UAW, I'm afraid.
Well hows that when the Toyota, workers are making more money per hour and lets not forget have better benefits than the new crop of UAW workers ??? :confuse:
What are the Toyota workers making per hour now? What are their benefits? Thanks, Kip
BTW in a couple of earlier post it was mentioned that Toyota had problems with "sludge" in the engines. Can anyone expand on that? What was the cause, and what models or engines were affected?
The micro view is the UAW model can't work anymore. Regardless of the state of the economy and the history of the US vs. the rest of the world, the products made today in the UAW system are not competitive, period. Call it Wal-Mart or whatever.
So, if the UAW model does not change, the industry suffers. Current events.
Add to that the brilliant decision to "Damned the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead" as gas prices reached $4/gal by ALL of the Detroit Three, and we are we we are.
>That's the sort of brainwashing that passes for public education by members of the teachers' unions.
You forgot to include the words "government schools" which is the typical smear used against the schools and the teachers by some who prefer to destroy them and substitute their own schools.
Very well said dallasdude1 !!! The UAW freed up billions to the automakers by agreeing to all these concessions and they still ran the ship into the iceberg.
You know as well as I do that the concessions have not really kicked in yet. By the end of next year, yes there will be a significant drop. Of course it will be 3 years before the health care reductions kicks in and that will be only after GM puts billions into an UAW account.
So GM could get out of the UAW Health Care deal by filing bankruptcy? I thought that money had already gone into a Union Fund. If GM still owes the UAW and does not have the money to pay. That could be some real rough times. Would the UAW be held accountable to the members for health care? If GM files I would say that the UAW will have to go into bankruptcy as well. If a Union can file for bankruptcy.
I do hate to see a lot of pensioners lose out on their pensions. I think that ERISA would kick in for part of the money. It looks bleak from where I sit.
Yeesh! Maybe the next thing we should import from Asia should be their women. The American ones don't seem to be too reliable, have an entitlement mentality, cost too much to maintain, and cause a lot of headaches. I really feel bad for you, rock. As a result of hearing many stories like yours, I choose to remain single and avoid a lot of heartache. Happy is the man who learns from the experiences of others. Maybe Asian workers do a better job because they don't have all this drama at home?
I don't think you'd be too happy working at a Kia plant slaving for Korean masters who look down on you as a a "foreign devil" and would treat you like a plantation laborer.
Comments
imidazol97,
I thought the 3.5 "shortstar" was a good engine ???? I had a few family members and friends with this engine in their cars and none of them had any trouble and it appeared it was slightly more powerful than the 3800. I guess none of them kept their vehicles more than 4 or 5 years because they wanted something "new" but the 3.5 being a bad engine is news to me. I will admit I never kept up to date on it's issues thus that is why I kinda threw out some idea's for ya'll........
bumpy, I always thought the GEO Prism, was made in Japan ??? :surprise:
-Rocky
Well my ex-wife to be I found out last week might be "playing dirty" and making the job that fits my skills and desires well almost impossible to land. Remember I held 2 previous national security clearances and when corporate does a preliminary background check and contacts the ex wife to be just what type of lies do you think she's telling them ???
They're hiring at the Georgia Kia plant...shall I send you an app???????
I don't want to work like a beaten slave, for peanuts !!!
Marsha7, Soooooo........ no thanks !!!
I applied at American Axel, last week but when I found out the starting wage for that plant in Three Rivers, was only $10 an/hr. :sick: I emailed the recruiter and canceled my pre-employment test. I couldn't afford the 70+ mile one-way drive with the price of gas.
-Rocky
You do need to give up on the UAW. They are just a skeleton of their former self. It will have to get a lot worse before it gets better. Help IS NOT on the way from our Government. Unless you are a bank or brokerage firm. It will take more than you and fintail to start the revolution :shades:
We as a country need to realize that the UAW/union movement is part of our fabric. Union or non union our parents/grand parents gave us something special. Representation and respect as a labor force which has created the biggest middle class in the history of the world. To not acknowledge their achievement would be foolish. The fact is that America is the number one consumer country on the planet and this was created by our consumer society/middle class. Our parents and grandparents didn't toot their horns enough. They toiled, suffered, and sweat-ed blood to make this world better for generations to come. For the most part these were descent hard working people who knew right from wrong. They didn't have to go to school and take ethics and or a host of modern day classes they offer in an attempt to instill moral turpitude. There is no way they would have willing, knowingly, and with little regard built a car which had the Ford Pinto concern of setting a human/humans on fire. These folks are a part of our legacy, which we should be proud of. Then too we need to see to it that the next generation of Americans have it as good if not better than the current.
The big corporations were never for the UAW and or organized labor as a bargaining unit. However, one could argue that they benefited as well. The consumer empowered with the ability to make buying decisions created the demand for goods and services, which allowed these corporations to expand/grow. They (the corporations) still make the calls and try to make the best product for the lowest price. These decisions make or break them, as well as their employees. Business decisions, demand for goods/services, marketing, and other factors are not a union decision.
Marketing is very likely to make or break a corporation. The best product at the lowest possible cost sounds better. But, thats wishful thinking in the real world. Examples could be, AOL is certainly not the best ISP (Internet service provider), however, they flooded the mail boxes of America with software and they are the largest ISP. Just try to change from AOL as an ISP and you can see that they have done a great job on making it not worth it. Then too, most knowledgeable folks would agree that the Apple was a superior computer, but PCs were marketed more aggressively. This list goes on of better marketing attaining a company the lions share in a market. So best doesn't always mean number one. We can only agree that the more choice/competition, the better for the consumer. Its wishful thinking that subsidies/lobbying aren't being used to gain market share or outright put competition out of business from overseas. All of this is business stuff which is beyond the UAWs control.
So if these large companies, who were never for unions and made the lives of our parents/grandparents difficult to say the least, want us to believe that the UAW and or organized labor is responsible for their failure. As a whole they were wrong then and are still wrong today. They lack the moral turpitude and credibility to be taken serious. Environmental crimes, child labor, and greed is their history. It should be noted that all this is going on today, in China. Public relations department and ethics training will never change their image much less their deeds. Thats not to say that many of todays moguls have no social conscience. Good folks like Soros, Buffet, and Gates are with us and the plight of the worker in modern day America. I feel the rebirth of the unions in America is near.
Lets make our grandparents/parents proud. We are (United States of America) the greatest civilization ever because of their efforts. Never ever allow the corporate world to disrespect their gift to us. Union were needed then and needed now. Just look over the border/ocean and look at life without a union.
It will be done through the future Ch. 11 proceedings at the end of next year from the looks of things.
The gift to everyone in the US will be world BEATING products. Still waiting on the auto front...
Regards,
OW
On one hand it seems he's done a fairly decent job in making changes at GM, but has he been too tentative? Has he been trying to walk a fine line where, in retrospect, radical changes needed to be made even 3-5 years ago? Should he stay or go?
I went from thinking he should go about 3 years ago, to swaying over to maybe he's doing a good job, to now thinking maybe it's time. Contrast with Mullaly at Ford - an outsider, making radical changes. What should GM do now, and should it be with the current CEO or a new one, perhaps an outsider?
For two reasons:
(1) They really can't. Not even BMW can produce a car as reliable as an Accord or Camry . . . nor Honda or Toyota produce a car as "cachet" as 3 or 5 series and still sell in the hundreds of thousands copies each. The big engineering challenge of a car company is indeed coming up with a car with a specific set of attributes at a certain price point. If you assume that can be accomplished just about by anyone, there wouldn't be car company worth its salt. It's a little like saying, why I can't I cook like the top chef after I buy all the same ingredients and build the gourmet kitchen?
(2) By the time the Accord/Camry is torn down, analyzed, and the production line for building these parts are built, Honda and Toyota will be selling their next generation Accord/Camry that is even better :-)
Daimler's fiasco with Chrysler proved both points. They didn't even have to tear down Mercedes cars, as the blueprints were provided within the company. There simply was no way to build a Mercedes using mercedes methods profitably at Chrysler's price; consumers were not interested in buying a Mercedes that falls apart like a Mercedes yet does not have a Mercedes logo on it. In a rapidly evolving industry like automaking, a successful mfr has to find out what the consumers want and make products cater to that need; copying is by definition a profit-reducing endeavor as the competition is already there before one's own product is ready.
January 3, 2008 - 32,806 views
I once worked for a colonel who'd address all obstacles by saying "you can solve any problem if you throw enough money at it." While our budget officer would have to breathe into a paper bag for a half hour afterwards, the colonel always managed to squeeze whatever was needed to resolve the crisis du jour from the budget– and solve the problem. Automakers native to the People's Republic of China (PRC) must have bugged his office; they've adopted the exact same philosophy.
Successfully implementing the "I'll buy what I need" strategy requires two things: 1) money and 2) knowing where to spend it. The Chinese automakers certainly meet criterion number one. The PRC is now the world's second largest auto market; auto sales are booming. The Chinese law requiring all foreign automakers to buddy-up with a domestic partner has delivered unto them an enormous financial windfall.
Criterion two– locating mission critical knowledge and/or technology– is a no-brainer. While there have been auto factories in the PRC since the mid ‘50s, the Chinese auto industry discovered the technological benefits of the aforementioned joint ventures (JV) since A Flock of Seagulls first flew. For the last thirty years, Western JVs have been flooding the PRC with new automotive designs, products and processes.
Initially, these JV partners used Chinese labor to assemble automobiles already in production elsewhere. The Chinese partners learned how to bolt together a car, but not much more. By the 1990s and early 2000s, the foreign partners had started designing models specifically for Chinese consumption, retooling their plants for full-scale manufacturing.
At this point, several "independent" Chinese auto manufacturers (i.e. companies not enmeshed in joint ventures) began leveraging their newfound carmaking skills to send in the clones: selling exact replicas of other manufacturer's models built for Chinese consumers.
Blinded by golden goosehood, stymied by laughable and unenforced Chinese copyright and trademark laws, GM, VW, Ford and others turned a blind eye to this sincerely flattering fraternal competition. Western automakers wrote it off as the cost of doing business in a military dictatorship. Besides, in China's burgeoning automotive market, there was– and is– plenty of pie for everyone! Of course, Chinese manufacturers had bigger plans
For the last decade of so, Chinese automakers have started eying foreign markets. As they dipped their entrepreneurial toes into Western climes, they realized they lacked competitive cars, and the engineering expertise to design them. Disastrous European crash testing literally drove the point home.
So Chinese automakers have started throwing money at European and North American automotive companies. Michael Laske, president of Austrian-based AVL China, says "The Chinese fundamentally lack products and knowledge, but they need to get into the market very quickly." And so AVL is banking big bucks, designing an entire engine line from the ground up to pop China's Chery.
Companies selling world class technology in so-called mature markets are falling all over themselves in their rush to cater to China's hunger for the best of the best. The list of successful sellers includes BorgWarner (turbochargers, clutches, transmissions), Sweden's Autoliv (safety systems), Austria's Magna Steyr (marketing strategy, legal requirements), Robert Bosch (diesel technology), Italdesign-Giugiaro and Pininfarina (design assistance) and A.T. Kearney (management consultants).
The joint venture partners are infusing their Chinese partners/competitors with cutting edge technology. GM has an engineering and design center in Shanghai, soon to be joined by a hybrid research center. To provide Chrysler with a small car for the U.S. market, Chrysler's engineers are tweaking every aspect of Chery's operations. So what happens next, once this technology transfer is bang up-to-date?
China's domestic automakers will use their imported expertise to export cars abroad. Chery is already selling cars in Mexico; they've declared their intention to enter the U.S. market in the next two to three years. Chinese automakers will be out in force at this year's North American International Auto Show.
To further the cause of global export, the Chinese government is pushing their domestic auto makers to merge into a "Big Three" and a "Mini Three." Given the government's protectionist views, once the mergers and reorganizations are over, GM, VW, Toyota et al will find themselves out in the cold.
Western manufacturers seem blissfully unaware of their own usurpation. They keep pouring money and engineering talent into China– even as the Chinese manufacturers are taking the first steps toward merging into megacompanies. Once again, western car companies are so blinded by the money they're making that they can't see the dangers lurking beyond the next quarter's bottom line.
But hey, that's the way the fortune cookie crumbles. If we don't do it, someone else will. Make hay while the sun shines. Pump and dump cuts both ways. That kind of thing. But any automaker that doesn't see China as a short term play, that stakes its long term financial future on the PRC, is headed for a rude awakening. Sooner rather than later.
Posted this on another forum but it looks like this UAW one is citing the same talk.
No easy, cheap fix for GM's problems
Losing a numbing $15.5 billion in one quarter, as General Motors Corp. confirmed Friday, is a sure-fire way to restart the wailing.
-Kill Buick and Pontiac.
-Euthanize Saab.
-Sue the directors.
-Dump Rick Wagoner, GM chairman through some of the most transformative (and bleak) times in the company's 100-year history.
-Blame the United Auto Workers and the clueless Detroit culture that didn't see $4-a-gallon gas coming (even if Japanese rivals Toyota and Nissan, the airlines and lots of others didn't, either).
However tempting some of these options may be -- and a few actually could happen -- the simple fact is that quick fixes for what ails GM right now aren't easy. Nor are they cheap for a company bleeding cash and trying to conserve every penny.
Soothe Wall Street? Its traders already have shown by their actions -- GM's market cap is a measly $5.79 billion compared with Toyota's $146.7 billion -- they believe the company to be essentially worthless despite its massive assets in the United States and its profitable operations overseas.
Force a company into shuttering brands? Doing so would be the automotive equivalent of the cure being worse than the disease by inviting a wave of litigation and requiring GM to write checks totaling at least a couple billion dollars to dealers protected by myriad state franchise laws.
Validate the critics who've assigned personal culpability to a complex series of business challenges, many of which cannot be controlled from atop the RenCen? Feed a press corps with the attention span of a kindergarten, which will then turn its attention to Bob Nardelli's meltdown at Chrysler LLC?
The point here is not to understate the gravity of GM's predicament because it is very grave. A company that burns cash at roughly the rate of $1 billion a month, reports a 30 percent drop in North American revenue in a single quarter, books a loss in its hot Asian operations and says its overriding objective is to maximize cash flow is a company that is fighting for survival.
I've covered GM for 12 years from three continents, seen its successes and failures, its smart moves (China and Korea), its less smart ones (Fiat) and a legit renaissance in the quality and looks of its cars and trucks. Through it all has been one constant: GM can't muster much of any momentum in its home market, and when things go wrong, they go really wrong.
The truth is that everyone in the business is getting whacked by record oil prices and the consumer's turn away from pickups and SUVs to smaller cars and crossovers. But no one is getting hit harder and destroying more shareholder value than GM, whose stock closed Friday at $10.23, down a staggering 76.3 percent from its 52-week high of $43.20 in October.
Is steering the General clear of federal bankruptcy court the only test of accountability for Wagoner & Co. -- beyond cutting bonuses, that is? GM's directors are scheduled to meet Monday evening and Tuesday, their first since June, in what is likely to be the first in a series of fairly dramatic board meetings over the next 60 to 90 days.
If GM's financials worsen, oil prices spike higher, credit conditions worsen, the automaker's cash hoard slips appreciably south of $20 billion and the company draws heavily on its revolving credit lines, pressure will intensify on the directors to act. It won't matter how broadly they may support Wagoner, President Fritz Henderson and their strategy.
That's business. That's how corporate directors can behave -- arguably must behave -- when sustainably crappy business results quickly merge fiduciary responsibility with personal liability and directors start showing up at board meetings with their lawyers in tow.
The more immediate question: What are you gonna' do about it, GM? It was telling that Henderson opened Friday morning's 90-minute conference call with a reprise of the automaker's two-week-old plan to raise $15 billion through $10 billion in "self-help" cost cutting and $5 billion in asset sales and financing.
"This is a game about rebuilding our revenue base," Henderson said. "It is what it is."
Yes, it is. And it's ugly.
Chinese automakers hope to avoid repeating the mistakes of Korean and Japanese carmakers, which took many years to establish a reputation for quality.
"I don’t think the Chinese will be an overnight sensation over here,” he said. “Based on past history of other companies, the U.S. is a hard market to crack. And they know about the missteps other automakers made in the United States over the last 20 to 30 years, so they want to avoid that.”
Dunne also notes that Chinese brands enjoy significant advantages in China’s domestic market, which is far from saturation. They understand the local markets, and are largely protected from foreign competition by the ownership restrictions. Chinese carmakers also have opportunities in other global markets where there is less risk, like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“They can learn in these markets,” Dunne said. “They are gaining experience in these areas first, getting everything more settled before they enter the U.S. market. Some are saying they’ll start selling cars here in 2008, or in 2009, but I think 2010 is more realistic.”
1940's and 50's America was a better place to live than much of the rest of the world because the rest of the world was still recovering from the devastating WWII effects. Germany and Japan were already having much higher growth rate than the US by the late 50's and early 60's.
The post-1971 America is mostly stagnant compared to the rest of the world in terms of economic growth and improvement of standard of living.
Pre-1950's Americans did not know what consumerism was. American economy of the 1940's accounted for over one half of the entire world's production . . . compared to today's 1/8 to 1/4 depending on whether you go by exchange rate or perchanse parity. Yes, Americans were turning out more goods than the rest of the world combined in the 1920's,1930's and 40's! Americans had high standard of living not because they were consumers, but because they were great producers! American products were plentiful, cheap and had high to reasonably good quality. The rest of the world wanted American goods.
Henry Ford's production line method introduced in the mid-1910's reduced automobile price from $3000 range to eventually $200 by the 1920's. Not only numerous of competing car making companies were put out of business, so did numerous farms because tractors made farm productivity grow dramaticly and farm product prices plummetted. The losing carmakers did not have the luxury of lobbying The Justice Department to tie up Ford for years in anti-trust litigations. The farmers did not have a union to set farm product prices. Instead the losing farmers went to the factories and got factory jobs. The American job landscape transitioned from predominantly farmers to predominantly factory workers in little over 20 years . . . as tractors and combines displaced farm hands, and farming jobs in the Ohio River Vallue were exported to the midwest farm belt.
The nascent Federal Reserve did try to "help" the farmers by making cheap loans available non-competitive farmers (and taking a percentage of their income in the process). Manufacturers took advantage of the low interest rates too . . . eventually leading to the Forida land bubble of 1925 and stock market bubble of 1928.
Farmers and manufacturers went bankrupt in droves as their addiction to ever expanding loans ran into natural limit, and the income they generated could not hope to satisfy the loan interest payment.
Hoover administration jumped in with both feet to "help" resolve the situation, and FDR's government went even further despite his campaign promise to scale back Hoover's counter-productive government committees on economic intervention. Wage reduction was essentially banned despite all goods and services going down in price . . . so those lucky enough to work for companies with monopolistic power kept their jobs and saw their purchasing power increase dramaticly, whereas those in competitive industries simply lost their jobs. The labor union was the mechanism through which wage protection in the face of general price decline was maintained. That's why labor unions were always founded in industries where there's some kind of "choke-hold" monopolistic power . . . where the workers were already paid higher than the average laborers, not industries where laborers were actually paid less than the average (kinda ironic considering the union rhetorics).
FDR administration also debased the currency dramaticly in order to keep the banks alive by avoiding further loan defaults. The missing amount between the original sound currency and the debased currency in loan payment will be subsequently paid back through massive government borrowing from the banks to fund war preparation and the war itself . . . individual depositors of course would see none of the difference back . . . but continued currency debasement instead for the next 70+ years.
This government inflation policy and the ability to print money at will transformed the economic landscape dramticly: while all companies are taxed in good times, only financial institutions are routinely bailed out by the government. It's a little like if everyone has to pay very high insurance premiums, but only SUV owners can collect payouts in accidents, would you drive anthing other than SUV's? That's the fundamental reason why manufacturing jobs in the US have been gradually replaced by financial jobs in the US in the last half century. In good times, a young engineer simply can not compete against a classmates who took the route of financial engineering . . . in bad times, the financial engineering firm gets bailed out, whereas the engineering firm not only doesn't get bail out but also have to foot the bill for paying the bailing out of the financial engineering firm. In other words, the young engineer not only was out bid by his classmate on the Maserati (if ever dreamed of), but also have to pay for the Maserati when the financial engineering classmate goes bankrupt! Any wonder why the brightest among our young are going into financial engineering instead of engineering?
This government intervention in the economy to bail out well connected firms also explain why executives get so much more pay than the average workers: the millions of dollars paid to a well-connected CEO would be cheap insurance indeed if that ensures that your company would get bailed out for billions of taxpayer money in troubled times. The government taxing power and discretionary regulatory power literally transfers money/power from the average person to those well-connected. In a pure socialist country, even money becomes unnecessary, as the big brothers get the goods and services that nobody in the society can buy with "money" at all.
Labor union unfortunately is part and parcel of this dog-and-pony show that has brought down America to where it is today, through the destruction of the competitive landscape that had existed previously. Printing more money does not equate to wealth. Consumer economy is a joke without production first. Productivity is what makes consumption possible. Labor union gets in the way of productivity. Union members not threatenedby dismissal and not having their income tied to individual productivity has no directly incentive to be productive. Union bosses do not produce anything, nor do any of the government labor relationship bureacrats . . . or any other burea
Ironicly, the Chinese are finally clueing up to the fact that all the trillions of IOU's that they have acquired from the US over the past three decades can quickly become IOU-nothing!
Thats a thing of the recent past. We now know that the Reagan deregulation of the 80s led banks into the brokerage business which has all but bankrupt them. Then too its silly to think that these so called finance engineers could ever do the demanding math in the real engineering Dept's. Thats why there is math for non engineering/science majors. This added to the fact that 70% of the student bodies are in the business schools. Many change their major, soon as they can't do the demanding courses, to something other than engineering/science. Only the most capable of the business student body even sits in to attempt the CPA certification.
Pre-1950's Americans did not know what consumerism was. American economy of the 1940's accounted for over one half of the entire world's production . . . compared to today's 1/8 to 1/4 depending on whether you go by exchange rate or perchanse parity. Yes, Americans were turning out more goods than the rest of the world combined in the 1920's,1930's and 40's! Americans had high standard of living not because they were consumers, but because they were great producers! American products were plentiful, cheap and had high to reasonably good quality. The rest of the world wanted American goods.
And exactly what were Americans, the number one consumer nation, buying? Americans fueled the economy via a thing called the multiplier effect. Demand for autos, televisions, homes.....
We are all aware that an industrial revolution transformed America from an agrarian society into an industrial society. Hence, unions came into being. Unions are people, the people who voted them in to have their voice heard. There was a time when big business lobbied to make organizing illegal. The Wagner Act made organizing legal.
Henry Ford's production line method introduced in the mid-1910's reduced automobile price from $3 range to eventually $2000 by the 1920's. Not only numerous of competing car making companies were put out of business, so did numerous farms because tractors made farm productivity grow dramaticly and farm product prices plummetted. The losing carmakers did not have the luxury of lobbying The Justice Department to tie up Ford for years in anti-trust litigations. The farmers did not have a union to set farm product prices. Instead the losing farmers went to the factories and got factory jobs. The American job landscape transitioned from predominantly farmers to predominantly factory workers in little over 20 years . . . as tractors and combines displaced farm hands, and farming jobs in the Ohio River Vallue were exported to the midwest farm belt.
Eugene Debs was prosecuted under the Sherman Act and ran from prison for president of the United States from prison. He was a union man and these companies managed to lobby his persecution.
First continental congress commissioned Eli Whitney to make interchangeable rifle parts. Without interchangeable parts no assembly line would be possible.
Consumer economy is a joke without production first. Productivity is what makes consumption possible.
Thats my point that the value added/touch labor are UAW employees. Unlike the financial engineer you mention. To say that the hard working folks in these unions don't buy things which further fuels the economy is just not real. They make actual product which is tangible and sold to consumers.
In order to keep buyers in the housing market the FED chose to lower interest rates. Each increment they raise rates is that many fewer buyers for the homes. However, by lowering interest rates they not only fuel demand, but stir up inflation. Inflation is by definition, too many dollars following too few goods. Thereby prices increase as the rationing mechanism. And yes our currency decreased as opposed to the EURO, Swiss Franc, and so forth. Unfortunately China decided to invest in the dollar and got burned. However, if we go into a recession, we would buy fewer of their goods at Walmart and therefore they are trapped between in an unfortunate enigma. All this is the aftermath of the sub prime mortgage abuse by greedy housing industry. The govt ought to demand they give back the five years plus of record profits prior to the bubble bursting.
Consumption does not "fuel" the economy unless you mean burning it down! Work only has value to others and the economy to the extent that a free market place would price it (personal enjoyment does not have a value to others).
Mohammed Atta redirected two planes . . . and the rebuilding effort is going to result in a lot of consumption . . . yes the GDP will count the rebuilding as economic activity, but anyone with a modicum of common sense understand that the massive destruction and rebuilding is not economic growth. If Mohamed Atta had been an evil genius and did all the "hard work" to build a nuclear bomb, subsequently blowing up a city . . . which necessitating the rebuilding of the entire city from ashes instead of "only" two buildings . . . the economy would have been hurt even more, not improved, despite what the government statistics would say about GDP as a consequence.
All of Atta's "hard work" had negative value regardless how hard he worked. If he consumed more while living on top the "consumption" that his destruction brought, he would have been an even bigger drain on the economy.
The inability to distinguish consumption vs. economy (which should really be productivity valued by the market place) is behind much of the 20th century misery, including all the wars to stimulate the economy and government subsidies and programs to do the same. There is nothing to be proud of to be a consumer . . . any idiot can consume. The faulty caculation of giving workers more money than the market place would pay for such labor so that they can go consume and engage "the multiplier effect" inevitably leads the next logical step: namely, the work that the person does is quite immaterial, why not just give money to anyone, so they can spend it to engage "the multiplier effect"? The real multier effect that ends up getting engaged of course was the fractional-reserve fiat money creation, through ever expanding government debt . . . that what led to the whole sale replacement of US manufacturing by financial engineering. The amount that a factory worker gets paid for his labor at rates supported by a free market is the result of manufacturing economy; any amount beyond that is the result of a financial transfer, from other participants of the economy to the specially privileged worker . . . once that element of financial engineering is introduced, the flood gate is open to further financial engineering that goes out to support that other participants of the economy that just got ripped off for buying a car that cost more than it's worth . . . so on and so forth . . . multiplying effect indeed . . . until the whole economy is enslaved by the bankers doing those adjustments while taking a cut in the process.
Bankers owning the economy and running it to the ground did not start in the 80's, or 1880's, or 1780's. It's as old as the mid-ages if not Roman times. It's always the bankers helping the government messing with people's lives in the name of "useful things" or "common good."
Collective price setting is illegal in any industry, and anathama to any competitive market place. Not sure why "collective bargaining" should be treated differently. Frankly, I'm even willing to go so far as allowing people to collude in price for labor and goods . . . but nobody should be allowed to use baseball bats or even a picket line to physically threaten anyone ignoring such price collusions. Mafias vote too, but the result of their voting is not binding to non-members.
Not sure why you brought up Eugene Debs; he did not run under the Democratic Party; his nomination was under "Socialist Democrat," a fringe Marxist party.
Not sure why you brought up Eli Whitney either. Production line came to Henry Ford as an inspiration after seeing a meat processor in Cincinnati. In any case, "production line" idea must have occured in human history numerous times, just like "discovering the Americas." Ford just happened to be the right men at the right time when all the other elements were ready for rapid growth. I don't think Ford would have gone very far in today's high tax and high regulation world.
"Thats my point that the value added/touch labor are UAW employees. Unlike the financial engineer you mention. To say that the hard working folks in these unions don't buy things which further fuels the economy is just not real. They make actual product which is tangible and sold to consumers. "
I will repeat my point: any pay UAW workers receive beyond what the free market place would have given is the result of financial engineering. How is the union boss' pay for being the union boss any "touch labor"? Touch people with baseball bats or bullets? If you want to limit line workers' pay to that which would have been given in a free market place anyway for their labor, there is no point of having a union now, is there? If you want argue that their increased pay is good because then they can go buy things, then why don't we have 10 people getting paid the same for every single UAW worker that actually makes anything? Doesn't that lead to even more money sloshing around? As you can see, anything beyond what the free market place would have paid is pure and unadulterated financial engineering. . . without commesurate production, all that's "multiplied" is in effect debt, not wealth. Debt masquarading as wealth is the fundamental reason behind our nation's current economic woes.
Performance, handling and Bose are not what will save GM or UAW unless GM wants to become the size of BMW or Porsche, and UAW wants to see its membership cut by another 90%. GM never had difficulty building expensive vehicles.
Yup, we certainly have common grounds there! The very fact that the FED adjust interest rate according to the needs of the financial industry is what's been causing the replacement of manufacturing industry in favor of the financial industry. If I set up a game where heads I win tail you lose, would you play?
" After the mom & pop are out of business Walmart would have no problem dictating price. "
As soon as Walmart raises price, Target will open on the next block arbitrarging profit margin :-) Walmart's primary advantage is its efficient distribution system. So far I have not seen Walmart indulge in the kind of behavior that old John D. Rockefeller was accused of doing (i.e. raising price sky high afterwards). I'm all for competitions, which is why IMHO there shouldn't be laws protecting imcumbents. Retailers come and go every generation or so as they grow from lean-and-mean to old-and-fat: Woolworth, JCPenny, Sears, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Overstock.com, etc..
Where do you get your facts?? Toyota's wages are about on par w/ that of the UAW, and Nissan just offered a couple thousand employees 6 FIGURE buyouts.
BTW local ad's around here show $20,000 Camry's selling for $16,000, while $21,000 Malibu's are selling for just over $18,000. So, based on a good product, the market dictates a better price for the Malibu than the Camry. Even a comparably equipped Impala is selling for only $2-300 more than a Malibu, which should show that the newer and "hipper" Malibu is a car the people want.
The Shortstar is as good as the Northstar it came from (take that as you like), and seems to be a decent mill for a wrong-angle DOHC V6.
DeJaVu.
Regards,
OW
So you don't think that tax rebates work? The stimulus check was given to Americans because GW wanted to be remembered as a kind president?
Mohammed Atta redirected two planes . . . and the rebuilding effort is going to result in a lot of consumption . . . yes the GDP will count the rebuilding as economic activity, but anyone with a modicum of common sense understand that the massive destruction and rebuilding is not economic growth. If Mohamed Atta had been an evil genius and did all the "hard work" to build a nuclear bomb, subsequently blowing up a city . . . which necessitating the rebuilding of the entire city from ashes instead of "only" two buildings . . . the economy would have been hurt even more, not improved, despite what the government statistics would say about GDP as a consequence.
You fail to factor in the multiplier effect of the wages paid to materials, construction, jet aircraft replacement, and the list goes on. These firms will have to add labor to produce the same buildings. When these folks spend these wages, they will create further demand. Cars, boats, homes, children, and a host of positive externalities.
A smart man would think that Atta could have caused more damage if would have targeted the oil refiners. However, Atta is far from a MENSA membership.
Bankers owning the economy and running it to the ground did not start in the 80's, or 1880's, or 1780's. It's as old as the mid-ages if not Roman times. It's always the bankers helping the government messing with people's lives in the name of "useful things" or "common good."
The CEO and board at Bear Sterns opted not allow redemptions in their hedge fund. They went as far as not to even acknowledge the shareholders at their quarterly meeting. Ignoring these wealthy folks and not fielding their questions. they paid dearly with gold mine being shut down. Never ever under estimate the power of hedge fund investors.
Banks and insurance companies are about as close to a sure thing as you will ever get. Actuarial tables and creating money is beyond having GOD powers. Reagan started the deregulation and they started acting like brokerage houses. If there was ever a case for capital punishment, we have been seeing them. There is no deterrent to ENRON and the likes. Public relations departments and teaching ethics in colleges/universities isn't going to stop the calculated crimes.
Eugene Debs
He was seen as a anti trust threat. This is the power the robber barons had back then. The law created to stop consolidation of power/wealth/collusion was used against a union wheel. You were mentioning that auto makers were unable to get the govt to enforce the Sherman anti trust Act. Where does it cost any firm to enforce the law of the land?
Eli Whitney
Without interchangeable parts the assembly line is worthless. Eli was the first machinist and inventor of the cotton gin. He would absolutely have been UAW. Ford was not any great inventor but rather a pathetic soul. The assembly line is a no brainier.
I will repeat my point: any pay UAW workers receive beyond what the free market place would have given is the result of financial engineering. How is the union boss' pay for being the union boss any "touch labor"? Touch people with baseball bats or bullets? If you want to limit line workers' pay to that which would have been given in a free market place anyway for their labor, there is no point of having a union now, is there? If you want argue that their increased pay is good because then they can go buy things, then why don't we have 10 people getting paid the same for every single UAW worker that actually makes anything? Doesn't that lead to even more money sloshing around? As you can see, anything beyond what the free market place would have paid is pure and unadulterated financial engineering. . . without commesurate production, all that's "multiplied" is in effect debt, not wealth. Debt masquarading as wealth is the fundamental reason behind our nation's current economic woes.
If you say that the union job pays more. So then it reasonable to assume that all the qualified workers will compete to get hired by the union shop. Hence, the cream of the crop will work at the best paying job. Its good to know that the skills and abilities of the UAW union worker are superior to those of the non union market rate job. Microsoft and Google offer above par wages in exchange for a workers services. Therefore, they get a superior employee aka the cream of the crop.
You should know that in a free exchange of goods or services, both parties are happy and or feel an advantage in this economic free exchange. If the a company sits down at the table with the UAW and no one is twisting their arm and holding a gun to their head. Then they sign a collective bargaining agreement. Both parties saw value in getting into the agreement and therefore signed. It doesn't get any more capitalist than this. The Wagner Act makes this legal and shouldn't be confused with price fixing an anti trust violation. You just don't think that labor should have a representation. If you look at the sports stars, they have agents to do this specialize task. It works and baseball, football, basketball, or hockey haven't gone out of business. Who represents the corporate entity? Specialized people do, because we know that the company isn't its stockholders, but rather a separate entity. The UAW is the membership and not some dummy charter to limit liability.
The ShortStar is a 4.0 V8 used in the Auroras based on the NorthStar. But in research I found the V6 3.5 is also called ShortStar. But I was talking about the V8 and may have a wrong nickname for it.
In either case I was talking about the V8. It's really packed in there. I'd prefer the 3800 with a supercharger for my pick and that's what I suggested to Rockylee.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
The compassionate conservative is nothing but when it comes to outsourcing our jobs. One can see nothing but greed. Exploiting child labor, polluting the environment, and crimes against humanity is their forte. They are friends with the communist they vilified during the cold war. The same ideology many of our young boys/girls died for is now no longer evil.
Your argument that Atta's terrorist attack stimulated the economy just goes to show how absurd this whole "government stimulation" logic is. We are talking about real mass murderers and whole sale destruction of property in that instance.
Fractional Reserve Banking is intrisicly insolvent whenever there is a run on the bank. The bank is promising all depositors/creditors that their demand deposit/short-term funds are available on demand, yet 95-98%% of the money is actually loaned out and not in the bank. If more than 2-5% of the people want their money at the same day, the bank is instantly insolvent . . . because the original promise is a lie to begin with. As such, any and all Wall Street banks are exposed to the kind of risk that Bear Stern was. Bear Stern was simply marked for destruction by other wall street firms when a whole sale bail out of the whole industry was required after the mortgage lending implosion. Why Bear Stern was picked? Because it refused to play ball at the LTCM bailout back in 1998. Read it up.
"You were mentioning that auto makers were unable to get the govt to enforce the Sherman anti trust Act. Where does it cost any firm to enforce the law of the land? "
Not sure what you are saying. Remember, rule of law was supposed to be what tax payment buys? The Eugene Debs' strikes were in effect violently expropriating property owners of their rightful properties.
"Without interchangeable parts the assembly line is worthless. Eli was the first machinist and inventor of the cotton gin. He would absolutely have been UAW. Ford was not any great inventor but rather a pathetic soul. The assembly line is a no brainier. "
So is interchangeable parts. My 12yr old cousin recognized the advantage of interchangeable parts when he was making mail boxes to earn pocket money. Comes to think of it, isn't Gutenberg's printing process built on the principle of interchangeable letters? That was almost 400 years old when Eli was making his muskets. Eli's primary fortune came from government contracts obtained through personal contacts, his armory was literally the equivalent of Haliburton of his time; his cotton gin prolonged slavery. If you insist he would have been a UAW man . . .
"If you say that the union job pays more. So then it reasonable to assume that all the qualified workers will compete to get hired by the union shop. Hence, the cream of the crop will work at the best paying job. Its good to know that the skills and abilities of the UAW union worker are superior to those of the non union market rate job. Microsoft and Google offer above par wages in exchange for a workers services. Therefore, they get a superior employee aka the cream of the crop. "
In case it's not obvious, MSFT has been losing talent left and right for the last 8 years! People with talent do not want to work for places where advancement is slow and future is tied in bureacratic quagmire. People can be untalented and overpaid at the same time: in fact, they are usually attracted institutions that guaratee a certain level of pay in complete disregard to productivity, such as union jobs.
" You should know that in a free exchange of goods or services, both parties are happy and or feel an advantage in this economic free exchange. If the a company sits down at the table with the UAW and no one is twisting their arm and holding a gun to their head."
What do you think strikes, picket lines, beating up of replacement workers and plant occupations are? Labor unions wouldn't survive a day if the employer is free to replace them with other workers who want to work. That's exactly what happened to the air traffic controller's union. Labor Union exist because FDR decided that a particular form of outright robbery was legal because union bosses were making political contributions and rounding up votes for FDR.
My beef with UAW people is whn a door is held together by one bolt, and they left off the other 3 or 4...or a window motor was not engaged so the window does not go up or down...or the door handle ring was not installed so the door handle comes off...or, what happened to me, the dashboard was not aligned into the body track, so the dash literally was 2-3 inches higher on the passenger side than the drivers side...this is not poor management, this is shoddy workmanship directly the result of the person on the line...and those people took months (up to 2 years) of hearings and appeals to get the incompetent off the line, meanwhile that idiot stayed on the line making junk...the union existed to keep the worthless idiots on the line, whereas if that same idiot was down here he would be fired in a day after his one written warning...
For that, I only blame the UAW...they did not design the junk, that was management, but they are the ones who literally made the product INTO junk by their lousy work habits that were supported by their fellow workers in the union...
Previous poster: " So then it reasonable to assume that all the qualified workers will compete to get hired by the union shop"...sorry, there is no way that statement makes any sense at all...when Lee Iaccoca complained that too many of his workers were illiterate, don't tell me that the best workers competed for the jobs...not with the junk they were putting out for years, that statement is almost laughable...
No one can seriously use the words "union labor" and "superior quality" in the same sentence when describing Big 3 products from 1970 to 2000-plus...
"Capitalism is getting bailed out these days."
These two problems are inter-related. When government place heavy taxation and regulation on all companies, yet only bail out financial companies, investors naturally switch from manufacturing industry to financial industry . . . because the latter is what the government in effect promotes.
What was happening for the past few decades in the US wasn't sending jobs overseas per se, as unemployment was the lowest on record until the current down turn. It was a whole sale replacement of manufacturing by financing. It was the inevitable result of socialistic bailouts of the financial industry. There is nothing capitalistic or free market about those bailouts. Government favoritism based on personal connections is the hall mark of socialism.
I don't blame you. That's the sort of brainwashing that passes for public education by members of the teachers' unions. America was a society of middle class since the days of Thomas Jefferson! That's why massive numbers of Europeans wanted to immigrate to America throughout the American history, until the 1970's. In terms of the number of hours that an American car factory worker had to work in order to afford one of the car that he makes, American workers were paid 5-10 times as much as his German counterpart in the 1920's. That's before UAW took over the American car industry.
Unions were never necessary. They were formed in industries that had the highest pays at the time. No, it wasn't the child laborers or the women workers who formed unions. Unions were formed in the highest paid industries: automaking, steel, oil, etc.. The goal was to exclude children, women, immigrants and other Americans who wanted high paying jobs from ever competing with incumbent highly paid workers. That's always what price collusion means . . . ever since the days of medieval trade guilds: limiting supply to benefit incumbent producers.
In terms of what labor unions have done for American people, it's a terrible deal. Labor unions transformed what had been American productivity centers (the private enterprises) into government-corporate partnerships. In the 1920's, 30's, 40's and early 50's, a car cost about 400hrs of an average worker's labor, and a house cost about 2000hrs. Today, a car cost an average worker 2000 hrs of labor, and a house 20,000 hours! Why is it taking 5-10 times as much of a worker's labor to get a car and a house? Because all those non-productive and counter-productive bureacrats, officials, union bosses and union lawyers have to take their share of the fruit of your labor before you can partake in your own! You see, in order to maintain union labor price fixing and prevent bank loan default (as companies would if their products went down in price due to competition and technology advancement but could't adjust labor cost accordingly, remember Ford's production line reduced average car price from $3000 to $200!), price decline had to be prevented by the government . . . fiat money had to be introduced to create constant inflation. When that happened, it became intuitively obvious that the government officials can get whatever it wanted by in effect counterfeiting its "legal tender." The "legal tender" is given to government officials and bureacrats first, then favored constituents such as labor relation experts and union bosses . . . since actual producers of goods are required by law to accept the "legal tender" in exchange for their real goods and services, they will just have less goods left over for you the average American. That's why you are working 5-10 times as many hours to get a car or a house, compared to the number of hours required before labor unions and big government took over America. It's literally the destruction of American middle class that existed since the days of the founding of the Republic.
Oh I see the economic laws work only when they support your rhetoric. Please bombard me some logic. I can't understand what your doing wasting time here among-st the lowly UAW.
Thats almost comical that Microsoft is losing talent and that they have little advancement. The first group of Microsoft employees are well off. Also that the free market forces don't work in the employment arena is news to me. You might cion this Pseudo Economics.
In any case sign that stimulation check and mail it to me (being that its worthless paper). Also tell your cousin that Texans like to bash mailboxes, when were not tipping cows. We bash'em if they aren't UAW made.
Bill Gates did just appear before Congress and asked them to loosen the requirements for immigration of Engineers. I don't know if he is under paying his and they are going to other companies.
The Air Traffic Controllers shut the countries air travel down. I was glad Reagan did what he did. They could have gone back to work and settled their differences. They felt it was better to destroy their Union than to give into the President's demand. That was JUST PLAIN STUPID. They got what they deserved. I personally do not want to live in a country like France where the services get shut down by strikes every other day. I was 37 years a Teamster in Alaska. We never went on strike. We had good contracts from the beginning. We knew what the job was worth and that is what we asked for. When a Union asks for more than the job is worth they are headed for trouble. The UAW and the greed of its members have brought much of the current problems on themselves. For me these last GM strikes at the few locations building profitable vehicles, showed me that the UAW has no interest in keeping GM alive. You cannot blame those strikes on anyone but the UAW and its goon bosses.
We bash'em if they aren't UAW made.
That is the mentality of the UAW that is projected to the rest of the Country. Americans will not have any sympathy when the doors at GM are padlocked and the Union goes bust. The UAW has brought the problems on themselves. GM and Ford may have lousy management. That should be obvious by the Union contracts they signed in the 1998 strike. That was the time to lock out the Union and give them the straight scoop. We cannot afford to pay more than the competitors. PERIOD.
They didn't, therefore the union for all purpose ceased to funciton when the members were laid off. Like I said, unions survive and thrive on the use of violence and the threat thereof. For most public worker's union, the violence and threat thereof comes from forcible tax collection. With the obvious exception in that air traffic controllers union strike case, Government negotiators often collude with the unions because it's not the government officials' own money.
On the steelworker unions, you are reading entirely too much propaganda. If the steel mills work conditions and pay were not far superior to what existed back then in the general economy (yes, teenagers worked dawn to dusk picking potatoes in the field, for their loving parents! That's how people lived before the automobile age), they could leave the plant at any time they wanted. Read up on Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers' history. It was full of violent plant seizures. The union memberss deployed not only personal firearms but canons!
"Thats almost comical that Microsoft is losing talent and that they have little advancement. The first group of Microsoft employees are well off. Also that the free market forces don't work in the employment arena is news to me. You might cion this Pseudo Economics. "
What are you talking about? The first generation of MSFT employees were entreprenuers; most of today's job applicants at Microsft are careerists. That happens in the life cycle of most companies. Do you think people applying jobs at HP today, with $200k student loans on their backs, are the same kind of people that worked in Dave Packard's garage? You seem to be quite out of touch with how reality works.
"In any case sign that stimulation check and mail it to me (being that its worthless paper). "
Sorry, only the government are legally allowed to counterfeit money. If I were to sign a check, I have to have real savings backing it. I can not borrow in your name, for example, unlike the government. Yes, how do you like that? borrow $100 billion in your name, waste a chunk of it printing and delivering funny papers, then have the bank friends collect a per centage on that borrowed money for perpetuity . . . to be paid every year with your tax money. Still like your "stimulous" check? If you do, you'd like the bondage of serfdom/slavery even better.
"Also tell your cousin that Texans like to bash mailboxes, when were not tipping cows. We bash'em if they aren't UAW made."
Is that some sort of economic stimulation plan? (for more replacement mailbox production). Do you guys take turns burning each other's houses down too as part of the economic stimulation plan? BTW, I always thought that Texans were a more self-reliant bunch, and had a better sense of what real money is.
Corporations become multi-nationals only after they have overseas operations; dah! Not sure why it's a bad thing for KFC or McD's to collect franchise fee from selling Chinese chicken to Chinese or American beef to Chinese, all for a handsome profit. If private American companies can provide for Chinese consumers a level of confidence in food safety that the 200,000+ person Chinese FDA can not provide, all the more power to the private enterprise and personal freedom! Perhaps some day, the government intervention-loving (the socalled "asian value") average Chinese may even wake up and decide to disband their FDA.
Rice is actually more expensive than wheat on the international market, much more expensive than corn. Some varieties (like basmati) are getting more expensive than chicken wings per pound lately. Indian and Chinese economies had been ruined by socialist policies of unwarranted wage support for favored groups that could not justify their pay in the free market. It's for the good of humanity that they are transforming into western style free market economies. If we embraced their old abandoned socialist policies now, we would deserve nothing more than gruel like they once did.
My uncle in Florida is a hardcore union man and always goes around bad-mouthing Republicans and conservatives as being responsible for the country's ills with rhetoric that sounds as though it came out of a "wobblies" meeting or the mouths of Eugene V. Debs or Gus Hall. Of course, I should note he was a machinist for Eastern Airlines and an IAM member and we know what happened to Eastern after their strike. At least he got a job working to fix the rides at Disney World, since he was actually skilled labor.
Very well said dallasdude1 !!! The UAW freed up billions to the automakers by agreeing to all these concessions and they still ran the ship into the iceberg.
I don't know what to think any more ??? I saw on insideline the next cobalt replacement that is suppose to get 40 mpg but GM, isn't going to give it IRS ???? :surprise: That's the type of example I'm talking about !!!! :sick:
-Rocky
My wife honestly has real mental problems gagrice, and she would do anything to keep me down. She literally went through $75K in cash and left me about $35K in debt. Stole around $20 grand from her wealthy father while blaming it on his girlfriend thus that should explain a lot. But yeah buddy one would think she'd want me to get a great job but my inside source says otherwise because I'd be able to challenge her. FYI, I applied for a job back in Texas, tonight....
You do need to give up on the UAW. They are just a skeleton of their former self. It will have to get a lot worse before it gets better. Help IS NOT on the way from our Government. Unless you are a bank or brokerage firm. It will take more than you and fintail to start the revolution
The UAW, is finished unless Barack Obama, passes the freedom of choice act while in office, kills NAFTA, implements tarriffs on shoddy chinese made imports.
I think Mr. Fintail, Mr. Lemko, Mr. Dallasdude1, I, could form a coup !!!
"The Rock"
Well hows that when the Toyota, workers are making more money per hour and lets not forget have better benefits than the new crop of UAW workers ??? :confuse:
-Rocky
Thanks,
Kip
BTW in a couple of earlier post it was mentioned that Toyota had problems with "sludge" in the engines. Can anyone expand on that? What was the cause, and what models or engines were affected?
Good luck!
Regards,
OW
So, if the UAW model does not change, the industry suffers. Current events.
Add to that the brilliant decision to "Damned the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead" as gas prices reached $4/gal by ALL of the Detroit Three, and we are we we are.
Regards,
OW
You forgot to include the words "government schools" which is the typical smear used against the schools and the teachers by some who prefer to destroy them and substitute their own schools.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
You know as well as I do that the concessions have not really kicked in yet. By the end of next year, yes there will be a significant drop. Of course it will be 3 years before the health care reductions kicks in and that will be only after GM puts billions into an UAW account.
I do hate to see a lot of pensioners lose out on their pensions. I think that ERISA would kick in for part of the money. It looks bleak from where I sit.
I don't think you'd be too happy working at a Kia plant slaving for Korean masters who look down on you as a a "foreign devil" and would treat you like a plantation laborer.