Private Jets!

[SaggyBalls]

No, it's not proven at all. A guy making $8.00 an hour can not afford a new car at all, unless they're REALLY smart with their money. America will never get its feet back on the ground by cutting back wages. That's preposterous. It will do nothing more than cause MORE bankruptcies.

You can't really make your point with a ridiculous figure like $8 an hour.

But a contract that essentially pays someone, say, $20 an hour for entry level contract labour for cutting grass with benefits milks the system a bit too.

I understand what you're saying and you're using more concrete concepts, but you're also exaggerating them at the cost of your argument's credibility - which is truly unfortunate because it's definitely with merit.

Yeah, maybe I am in a bit of a conflict of interest as far as having an opinion on this. I've just been made shop steward (in one of the largest construction projects on the planet right now) so I'm obviously going to have a pro-Union/worker bias. Then again, when the CEO is making what is it,

$38 million a year, it's very hard to condemn the workers making $50-100 Thousand a year. As sad as it is to say, I really need these guys to make cars and consume electricity for my own future employment.

Dude I should have used purple...or at least purple quotation marks...but I'm lazy sometimes.

Overall, the excessive profits in my mind should have gone partly back to the economies and infrastructure of the communities they directly and indirectly supported. to allow for a more hollistic, self-supporting sustainable culture of consumption instead of showing people countless examples of it not working.

I guess we'll have a few more years of accelerated humanity to see what happens.

Till then I'll be looking for a real working version of the Homer.

I'd have someone drive me around so I could feel like the Pope.

[boiler]

Minimum wage in Michigan is $7.40/ hour, in Ontario it's $8.75. But yes, I did exaggerate a bit to make my point, as is prone to happen in order to make points, in order to create reaction (as you've been so eloquently demonstrating in the politics forum )

[SaggyBalls]

Exaggerate, no.

Descriptively aggravate yes.

I wonder if anyone's gonna reply with an 'I'm shocked and appalled, sir'

On a side note, I'm pigging out on figs right now and it's amazing what happens with you roll them around in your fingers for a little while and then squeeze away from the stem.

Yummy!

[bradm]

Here's yet another nice article I found via Fark:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/09/04/060904ta_talk_surowiecki

Car dealers, with their low-production-value TV commercials and glad-handing tactics, seem like the archetypal small businessmen, and it’s hard to believe that they could sway the decisions of global corporations like G.M. and Ford. But, collectively, they have enormous leverage. Dealers are not employees of the car companies—they own local franchises, which, in every state, are protected by so-called “franchise laws.†These laws do things like restrict G.M.’s freedom to open a new Cadillac dealership a few miles away from an old one. More important, they also make it nearly impossible for an auto manufacturer to simply shut down a dealership. If G.M. decided to get rid of Pontiac and Buick, it couldn’t just go to those dealers and say, “Nice doing business with you.†It would have to get them to agree to close up shop, which in practice would mean buying them out. When, a few years ago, G.M. actually did eliminate one of its brands, Oldsmobile, it had to shell out around a billion dollars to pay dealers off—and it still ended up defending itself in court against myriad lawsuits. As a result, dropping a brand may very well cost more than it saves, since it’s the dealers who end up with a hefty chunk of the intended savings.

Aloha,

Brad

[tigger]

The wasteful Management practices of the Major Manufacturing Corporations in mainly North America is reason for no profit .The constant restructuring with fuzzy math ,as so no one including the shareholders really ever knows where the companys financially stand,oh wait a little money problems well let's restructure.What is that no left bigger than us to bail us out and wait even the banks are doing to.We are about 25 years to late for that plan.

It is interesting to be old enough to watch the right systematically try to blame organized labour for our financial woes.Also to witness the coraling of the freepress to to it,haha.Watching the alot of the under 30 post secondary grads saddle up to the right point of view is humourous.I have worked in non union places with less than desirable workers they are every where and so are the great workers.

Divide and keep us going around and around while the same CEO,s just scooped another Billion doller bailout and the middle class yet again pay for with our tax base and in the states send are children to secure some resources for the elite.

But who am i kidding it must be the hourly employees of our nation because of who we have to choose from to elect instead of collectively putting them out to sea.

We should be demanding some accountability or criminal charges to the power brokers of our society who so nicely put us in this present situation.

[bradm]

I saw a bit on one of the evening network newscasts today, talking about the big three auto companies in comparison to the American arms of the foreign companies. It pointed out how a US Hyundai plant that was making SUVs simply switched to making sedans when SUV sales plummeted. In fact, as a plant employee pointed out, they could switch over the type of vehicles the plant produced in a matter of hours. At a GM plant, a similar switch would take weeks.

In other words, the foreign auto makers don't just make better vehicles, they're bettter at making vehicles. In fact, there are several (three, I think) new auto plants being opened in the Southern US...all by foreign manufacturers.

(One other striking difference: GM has something like 32,000 retired workers that it's supporting with things like health benefits. Hyundai has exactly zero retired workers.)

Aloha,

Brad

[AD]

In other words, the foreign auto makers don't just make better vehicles, they're bettter at making vehicles.

i'd never buy a hyundai, for what that's worth.

[SaggyBalls]

what is that worth?

ever drive one?

[AD]

yup, and they drive fine. i just don't think they're put together all that well and they don't hold their value at all.

and, although what bradm posted may be true, i don't believe that a car factory can be retooled in hours. a parts plant maybe, switch the molds and they can produce a different bumper, but an assembly plant? i don't think so at all.

[boiler]

(One other striking difference: GM has something like 32,000 retired workers that it's supporting with things like health benefits. Hyundai has exactly zero retired workers.)

Aloha,

Brad

I read that a GM costs a couple grand before it's even assembled due to overhead to cover retirees. But hey, that's what we do in North America, we work our asses off for about thirty years and then hope that there is some kind of social security net to look after us as we get old.

[Thorgnor]

Cause gods knows we don't wanna look after our elderly ourselves... it'd cramp our style.

[boiler]

Cause gods knows we don't wanna look after our elderly ourselves... it'd cramp our style.

I don't know about you, but when I retire, I want the money to do shit, rather than just be looked after.

[SaggyBalls]

that safety net was sustainable - but the rest of the profit structure did nothing to ensure it could support the economy.

Retirement costs should really not be villified.

[bradm]

I just had another idealistically wacky idea: instead of giving the big three auto makers $25 billion, why not spend the same amount of money differently? First, give the big three exactly zero ollars. Then take, say, $5 billion and use it as "seed money" (or venture capital) for new or small businesses (defined somehow, like less than $1 million/year in revenue, and/or fewer than 100 employees) or to help the automobile support industries (e.g., parts suppliers) convert to creating new (non-automotive) parts/technologies, take another $5 billion and spend it on health insurance (for, say, three years) for the former big three employees, and use the remaining $15 billion on programs to re-educate and re-train the former big three employees. In other words, use the money to invest in and transform the US economy into something that'll be sustained into and through the next 100 years, rather than try to prop up the basis of the economy for the previous 100 years.

Aloha,

Brad

[SaggyBalls]

Why not do both?

how come it has to be 'instead'

spite? If that's even a small part of it then pettiness is going to permeate everything that money does. Good or bad, and sets a precident for pettiness to be accepted as a part of business practice.

The money's there somewhere. It's the perfect time to spread it around.