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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Sirs -
Shame on you for using a link to an article to back up your story without reading that article first (or ignoring what i says".
You linked the text "based on a spurious claim" that UAW workers earn "significantly more" than non-union workers.
The NY Times article you linked does debunk the "spurious" claim that UAW workers earn $73 an hour. However, the article goes on to say:
"But the defenders are not right to suggest, as many have, that Detroit has solved its wage problem. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler workers make significantly more than their counterparts at Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in this country."
Either you are guilty of shoddy work, or trying to pull one over on your readers in pursuit of your own agenda. Please own up to whichever it is.
When the Big Three build better cars; dump incompetent management and their excessive salaries, they can return to successful, profitable companies. Don't blame the southern senators for Detroit's incompetence.
...they are the 21st-century economic equivalent of Bull Connor.
Obama probably doesn't have the chutzpah to do it, but if this stalemate continues once he assumes office, he needs to call them and their henchmen out for the backward fools they are.
More than anything, it was moral suasion against the South -- then as now the most backward element of the American electorate -- that helped get civil rights legislation passed. We need to do likewise now economically -- get the rest of the country so angry at the South (and make it stick with boycotts, diminished tourism and the like) that its legislators will have to capitulate.
That's right. Deranged. Why don't you stick to the facts? It takes 60 votes to keep the bill going, so a small group of southern Repub Senators can't stop the bailout. Please help the reader out with facts, except of course if you did, it would've ruined your thesis.
Next, without any labor changes, legacy cost changes for post-retirement health insurance, etc, a bailout would've been meaningless.......just throwing money to GM and Chrysler for them to burn through in 4 months. Then what?
They need massive restructuring, not $15B to burn through.
You guys are pathetic. The southern Repubs are looking out for the taxpayers, in their state, and in fact in many states. Stick with the facts.
Therer isn't enough money to bail them out. The big boys of the Auto Companies, and the Big boys in the Union have milked the cow dry. It's time to start over. The last thing we need is our Government in the auto business. And, for sure we don't want Socialism like you guys apparently do. Let the cards play like they lay.
and we sure punished those executives for it. Funny how no one seems to have "punished" AIG executives for that spa retreat, we just expressed some quickly forgotten shock. And it was really important the banks get that money, so credit would free up. But if they just want to keep it, or buy other banks with it (as a Pittsburgh bank is in the process of doing with a Cleveland bank), hey, who are we to put restrictions on them?
It's been pretty clear from the beginning it was all about putting the thumb to the workers. And not just the current ones, but those damned retirees. Yes, chapter 11 - that would allow us to cut off all their pensions and health insurance, ha ha.
Obviously the whole economy needs to "restructure," and one would hope become less dependent on debt and consumerism. But refusing to give what is, in comparison, a small amount to these companies, (who have, along with their workers, made consessions) is taking a sledge hammer to people's lives. And to the communities they live in.
Yes, you're morons. Like snobby, sniffling heiresses at an art auction, you look down your noses at US cars and bemoan their quality, while fawning all over Toyota, Nissan, and Honda. Of course, I'm willing to bet few, if any, of you even know how a car works, and have never dared try to fix one yourself, which no doubt you also feel is far beneath you.
But I've spent my life working on cars, all makes, and will tell you what's already been proven: smart money buys US cars. Dollar for dollar, they're as well-made or better the foreign cars, are far cheaper on average to buy and repair, and the profit made on those cars goes to a domestic company, not a foreign one.
What about the surveys ya'll cite? Any survey that involves self-reporting of defects or costs is notoriously flawed, as anyone in marketing will tell you. People spent more money to buy their Camry, and so of course they're going to report greater satisfaction with it. This illusion of a quality difference is ingrained in Americans now. All the "satisfaction" studies just reinforce that.
That said though, of course you're going to be more satisfied with a $30K Toyota than with an $18K Sunbird. Of course there will be a quality difference, just as there would be in any two items separated by such a large amount of money. But you dopes insist on comparing them anyway, and dinging the US carmakers for the difference.
Here's a simple test to show what I'm talking about: look at the all the cars around you on a busy highway. Lots of foreign cars, right? Now look at the relative ages of those cars. Maybe you can't tell easily, if you haven't been watching all along, but I can tell you my 1997 Blazer is nearly always the oldest car on the road. Where are all the Hondas/Nissans/Toyotas that are older?
They're already in the junkyard. You'll see them there, too, stacks of them, if you ever take the time to go look.
And save your "horror stories" of your prior experiences with the domestic cars. I've seen stories for every foreign car just as well. And in the mid 70's to late 80's, the domestic makers did need to play catch-up to Japan, but that's been corrected, as it should have.
Read the chapter in "The Millionaire Next Door" about car buying. It's a detailed analysis of the relative costs. You'll see how much money you've wasted worshipping the foreign cars.
Thanks for helping ruin US manufacturing, you idiots.
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