G.M. Bailout is Wrong
I think that the proposed bailout for General Motors is all wrong, and I am not even a "free-market" hump.
One problem is that the $25Billion being proposed for GM will be gone in about 4 months, and they will be back at the trough in spring.
The Big Three automakers competitors in North America have wage costs that are half of the bloated UAW wage costs. Many people would be glad to have a job that pays what Toyota is paying.
The bigger problem is that it will encourage GM to continue to build the same products that people do not want, and that are all wrong for the current state of the world, especially as concerns emissions. There can be little doubt that the oil corporations also love GM's gas guzzling vehicles, and that there is almost certainly collusion between these two giant industries to continue in the old ways.
Giving $25Billion to companies such as Zenn - the Canadian electric car maker - would be a stimulation that would see the new technologies become the forefront of our economy. Thats the direction we need to go, not pour taxpayer money into the obsolete behemoths such as G.M.
Moving to a renewable energy and electric car
economy will be a major shake up for sure, and it will not be painless
to
see GM collapse, but these are times of change, and if we do not take
steps to make those changes we will simply find ourselves on the scrap
heap of history.
Link?
How much does Toyota pay, and how much does GM pay?
If people want to buy Zenn cars, then can do so. Why would you want to give my taxes to some private entrepeneur? If we're giving public money, we should just buy the company and let me decide who runs it and where the profits go.
Thx for your thoughts LT
[i don't read "unionist posts" anymore]
Former co-workers that have been applying in Woodstock tell me that the wages and benifits are around the same as any big three assembly plant.
As these new manufacturing plants open, the Asian owners allways site, as a big reason for locating in S/W Ontario, the work ethic and skill levels of the workers.
Bloated wages-- which, when I've spent my bloated wages no one ever told me to take back my ill gotten gains, that they didn't want my money-- aren't an issue here. The UAW in the States has, for over the last decade, rolled over and played dead to big three demands.
So it isn't unions, or workers. And foriegn management seems to succeed where North American managers fail.
So, as they say in Mythbusters, "There's Your Problem".
Does GM deserve a bailout? Or Ford, or Chrysler? It all depends on what the long term, big strategy one has for the national economy.
But to base that vision on the dogma that auto workers make too much money in this day and age when we are gouged relentlessly by monopolistic companies, by companies that price fix, where lawyers charge $650.00 dollars an hour, and doctors fuck up our neighborhoods by handing out oxycontin like it was candy-- because it's profitable for them to do so-- is outrageous.
Don't lay this bullshit on our doorstep.
I'm wiping my tears. I'm choking back my sobs. By the way, could someone ask Noah_Scape to stop soiling this nice place with his anti-worker anti-union screed? Plus, his style is boring, so you can't even work up a good belly-laugh.
Ok, great point, I back down after reading that thoughtfull prose Tommy Paine, you are right, there is something else at play. I heard a guy saying that Toyota's wage costs are half, but that is apparently not an issue here.
But should GM get a bailout after mismanaging their little corner of the corporate world so badly? I guess thats the real question, and I should not have gotten sidetracked with the worker's wages issue.
[i do not read unionist's replies]
Should GM get a bailout? Like I said, it's complicated. And, to be honest, if I was in a positon to make that decision, I'd need a much larger knowledge of where the economy is, and where it is going and where we'd like it to be in twenty or thirty years.
There's a related thread here, and I will repeat here much what I said there. In the U.S., they just bailed out the fake economy to the tune of $700 billion dollars. $25 billion to elements of the real economy seems like chump change.
What I didn't say in the other thread is that these companies like Toyota, Hiundia, etc, are based in countries where government subsidies to them are huge and not questioned. It's part of the fabric of their society.
Here's a story for ya.
Earlier this year, we were graced by the visit of representatives from both a Chinese and Japanese businesses. The plan is to have us make and export our product to China for some years as they establish their own manufacturing base for the product, then they'll buy our technology.
Fair enough. New business, no one can turn that down.
The Japanese fellow was tagging along to sell us the steel to make the product. Because they can supply us with the steel cheaper than we can buy it here.
Think about that. Japan has to import the scrap steel or iron, and import the energy to make that steel, from all corners of the globe. Then it has to ship that steel across the pacific, and more than half way across North America. And they can do it cheaper than steel we can get from Hamilton, less than 90 minutes away? And Canada has a scrap steel infrastructure second to none. And we have iron mines. And our own selection of energy we don't have to import.
Tell me. Tell me the Japanese don't heavily subsidize their industries. And at the same time zealously gaurd their domestic markets from imports.
In fairness, we ask our industries to compete against this with two hands tied behind their backs, do to our reluctance to subsidize-- right or wrong.
So, is it mismanagement? I think yes, but perhaps not as bad as it seems. But, this isn't the first time the Big Three have been caught flat footed in my lifetime. So, incompetence is an issue, certainly.
The very fact they have to go hat in hand to the government is damning evidence of thier inability to manage, and simply put, they cannot be trusted with such money.
But, neither can the guys from AIG, but they got theirs.
A more cinematic way of putting it might be to revisit the movie "The Unforgiven". At the end, Clint Eastwood has a shotgun aimed at a wounded Gene Hackman, who pleads "I don't deserve this" to which Eastwood replies "Deservers got nothin to do with it."
Does GM deserve a bailout?
Deserves got nothin to do with it.
There seems to be little leadership in the automotive sector. They cannot see the golden oportunities if it stares them in the face.
Cars are probably our worst contributors to airpolution, climate change and waste. Which puts the car manufacturers in the best position to effect change. Reconfigure a few assembly lines into disassembly lines , to recycle those environmental clunkers back into resourses. Get rid of the internal combustion engine. Standardise to fewer models. forget about yearly fasion/model changes. Keep it to the essentials.
Anyway let their proposals towards making their products sustainable be the sell on our support.
Either you, or the guy, are uninformed, or have decided to lie.
Your anti-worker sentiments are reprehensible. What is worse is that you have to fabricate in order to justify them.
Unionized workers at Toyota-Japan have health care costs covered by national socialized medicine. Same is true of 30 some other nations. Meanwhile, car company officials in the U.S. say group health insurance for their workers tacks on anywhere from $1000 to $1500 dollars per vehicle. An old car company joke said GM was in the business of providing group health insurance for workers first and making cars as a sideline. GM and Ford can compete with Toyota and Hyundai and VW but not with Japan and Korea and Germany. The most privatized and most expensive health care system in the world not only produces crappy national health care statistics, it's also a competitive disadvantage for corporate America.
I am not sure if wages are the issue. Health care is provided in Canada too. I think the issue is mostly product.
The last time I changed a burned out headlight on a Ford I needed three different screw drivers, and a sealed beam assembly. On most imports you just lift the hood, pull out the light socked , and replace a bulb.
Thx for your thoughts LT
[i don't read "unionist posts" anymore]
This post was nothing but an excuse to personally attack unionist. Not acceptable. Cut it out. And unionist, be the grown up and don't respond in kind, please.
Mine don't show up in boxes either michelle, unless I do it manually.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
But I don't even know HOW to do it manually!
Anyhow, on this topic...
I'm not sure that the government should bail out GM either. Seems to me the last time we did that, they laid a bunch of people off. Why would we subsidize an industry that keeps making huge gas guzzling cars and SUVs that no one wants to buy and that are bad for the environment anyhow?
Now, if GM promised to keep jobs in Canada, promised not to lay anyone off, promised to use the money to retool their plants so they can start making cars people actually WANT to buy, then maybe people wouldn't think that bailing them out would just be throwing good money after bad.
Just a bunch of disjointed facts to throw in:
Overall labour costs at non-union Asian owned assembly plants are not significantly lower. And as alreasy pointed out, wages are the same. In fact the when the UAW agreed to lower wages, it was the Asian owned US plants that followed the wage cuts.
I'm an electric car proponent and trying to be a builder of them. Even I don't propose them as a replacement. And Zenn is a scam.
Guarantees to keep jobs in Canada are a non-starter. There will be lots fewer jobs in both the US and Canada under best case scenarios, let alone what happens under the other scenarios. The most that can be done is negotiating controls where governments get future chances to veto specific plans for job cuts... with the de facto limit of course that every specific veto does really put the whole plan at risk as to whether it can fly. Investment decisons in auto companies as to where investment and work goes are incredibly complicated. Change any factor, and everything else has to be re-jigged.
People might check out the related thread:
http://rabble.ca/babble/labour-and-consumption/more-corporate-welfare-time-its-auto-industry#comment-960248
"More corporate welfare; this time it's the auto industry"
[I can't figure out where a link thingie is, or how the one in the comment box works. I'm onviously not the only one. But at least we can click on the urls posted, even though they aren't highlighted.]
Ken, it works opposite from the old babble. You type the title/label of your link in the comment box, highlight it and then click on the chain icon image. A separte box will pop up where you put in the actual url.
I was lost too until I discovered it by accident.