Auto industry bailout, I vote no....

[sharon kinsella]

That's just peachy. Save the banks, kill the customers.

What is wrong with you people. Do you truly hate working stiffs that much?

Do you like abandoned houses and all sorts of peripheral businesses folding and further destroying our country? State, County, City?

Look at the steel industry - oh, that's right you can't, most of it is in other countries.

Guess what will happen if our biggest industry folds?

Ridiculous.

[ryan costa]

From an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal....

"General Motors is a once-great company caught in a web of relationships designed for another era. It should not be fed while still caught, because that will leave it trapped until we get tired of feeding it. Then it will die. The only possibility of saving it is to take the risk of cutting it free. In other words, GM should be allowed to go bankrupt."

Click here for the complete text.

it is hard to imagine why the big bank bail out was swallowed so easily. all banks did was try outsmarting each other into trading junk bonds and imaginary security instruments back and forth.

GM is a real company that makes real physical objects. If it does declare bankruptcy, it should not just close down most of its stores like Circuit City. The bankruptcy should be mitigated. separate the company into a few different companies by product line. what's left from that could provide a work force and facilities for making passenger rail cars, locomotives, etc. what's left from that could be leased or sold to foreign car companies in the wake of 30 percent tariffs.

[Stephen Eisel]

That's just peachy. Save the banks, kill the customers.

What is wrong with you people. Do you truly hate working stiffs that much?

Do you like abandoned houses and all sorts of peripheral businesses folding and further destroying our country? State, County, City?

Look at the steel industry - oh, that's right you can't, most of it is in other countries.

Guess what will happen if our biggest industry folds?

Ridiculous.

Sharon take look at the legacy cost. for the Big 3 .. A bailout for them is only going to be a temporary Band-Aid. Maybe the big 3 should take a look at how the Japanese do it or become non-union to save American jobs..

[sharon kinsella]

Oh here's the voice of reason.

That's a little too simplistic Stephen. The only reason why the Japanese were able to encroach on the Auto Industry here is because we don't enfoce import tariffs. You know the things that were supposed to level the playing field for everyone?

In addition, they didn't have to meet the OSHA standards that American manufacturers have to meet.

Their labor costs are lower because they provide more voluntarily.

What you don't know about the labor unions would fill volumes.

[sharon kinsella]

I addition take a look at what brought down the financial industry here and they're worthy of the bailout.

Um.... NO!

[Stephen Eisel]

Oh here's the voice of reason.

That's a little too simplistic Stephen. The only reason why the Japanese were able to encroach on the Auto Industry here is because we don't enfoce import tariffs. You know the things that were supposed to level the playing field for everyone?

In addition, they didn't have to meet the OSHA standards that American manufacturers have to meet.

Their labor costs are lower because they provide more voluntarily.

What you don't know about the labor unions would fill volumes.

Please show me the facts on tarrifs not being collected by the US on vehicles imported from Japan.. Thanks!

PS have you ever heard the term "Worker Protection, Japanese Style"

[Stephen Eisel]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/26/news/co ... /index.htm

Cost issues
A big reason is the cost of labor. As analyzed by Harbour-Felax, labor costs the Detroit Three substantially more per vehicle than it does the Japanese.

Health care is the biggest chunk. GM (Charts), for instance spends $1,635 per vehicle on health care for active and retired workers in the U.S. Toyota (Charts) pays nothing for retired workers - it has very few - and only $215 for active ones.

Other labor costs add to the bill. Contract issues like work rules, line relief and holiday pay amount to $630 per vehicle - costs that the Japanese don't have. And paying UAW members for not working when plants are shut costs another $350 per vehicle.

Here's one example of how knotty Detroit's labor problem can be:

If an assembly plant with 3,000 workers has no dealer orders, it has two options. One is to close the plant for a week and not build any cars. Then the company still has to give the idled workers 95 percent of their take-home pay plus all benefits for not working. So a one-week shutdown costs $7.7 million or $1,545 for each vehicle it didn't make.

[Tim Liston]

Sharon....

I like working stiffs. I am one. And I don't want our states, cities, our homes etc. to suffer. I live in them.

The domestic auto industry is on the brink of total collapse. Rather than just bash those of us who think bankruptcy reorganization is in the best long-term interest of the domestic auto industry and its suppliers, tell us what you think should be done. And tell us what part of the WSJ editorial is incorrect in your view.

No emotion. Just reason. Please....

Tim

[Lynn Farris]

Steven you stated from the Money Article:

Health care is the biggest chunk. GM (Charts), for instance spends $1,635 per vehicle on health care for active and retired workers in the U.S. Toyota (Charts) pays nothing for retired workers - it has very few - and only $215 for active ones.

This is an excellent point. In almost every civilized country industries are subsidized by their government with a form of national health care. How can GM, Ford and Chrysler compete when this amount of money is added to each car. And why wouldn't they go out of our country for their labor to find a similar work force in say Canada?

National Health Care will be a critical element in the solution to many of our problems. GM I heard tonight on the news spent over 3 billion dollars in health care in 2007. That Steven you and I agree is an incredible amount. The question is should GM not provide health care to their workers?

Also Henry Ford paid his workers well because he wanted people who can afford to buy his cars. He understood the importance of a strong middle class.

The middle class in this country is quickly shrinking. Sharon is right, we let the steel industry go under (Japan was dumping here to get it). We have let the computer industry pretty much go to the pacific rim countries. Every decade we lose more and more industries that were the backbone of this country and the middle class. I submit that allowing 10% of the workforce to lose their jobs would make the situation only worse.

A Green revolution will help create new jobs and a policy that rewards companies for creating living wage jobs here instead of taking them abroad will too.

But they have to act soon - or there will be no industry left to save. And of course no one to buy those homes or those cars.

Earlier in this thread Steve Hoffert explained why it is important to have manufacturing. He said much more articulately what I was trying to say.

[sharon kinsella]

Stephen show me where they are enforced.

Tim - Don't tell me not to write with emotion.

I've been a union woman all my life. This is the history of my family, this is the reality of my "world". I have a lot of emotion about it.

If you don't want emotion, please confine your discourse to robots.

Glad to hear you break a sweat at work every day. The board does seem to be white collar heavy, wouldn't you agree?

[Stephen Eisel]

Stephen show me where they are enforced.

[Stephen Eisel]

This is an excellent point. In almost every civilized country industries are subsidized by their government with a form of national health care. How can GM, Ford and Chrysler compete when this amount of money is added to each car. And why wouldn't they go out of our country for their labor to find a similar work force in say Canada?

But I would not socialize medicine just to help the Big 3 cut cost... The $25 billion would much cheaper

[Stephen Eisel]

it looks like the big 3 bail out debate is over

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/breaki ... -chrysler/

[quote]Chinese carmakers SAIC and Dongfeng have plans to acquire GM and Chrysler, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reports today. [A National Enquirer the paper is not. It is one of China's leading business newspapers, with a daily readership over three million.] The paper cites a senior official of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology– the state regulator of China’s auto industry– who dropped the hint that “the auto manufacturing giants in China, such as Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) and Dongfeng Motor Corporation, have the capability and intention to buy some assets of the two crisis-plagued American automakers.â€

[Steve Hoffert]

[quote="Stephen Eisel"]it looks like the big 3 bail out debate is over

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/breaki ... -chrysler/

[quote]Chinese carmakers SAIC and Dongfeng have plans to acquire GM and Chrysler, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reports today. [A National Enquirer the paper is not. It is one of China's leading business newspapers, with a daily readership over three million.] The paper cites a senior official of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology– the state regulator of China’s auto industry– who dropped the hint that “the auto manufacturing giants in China, such as Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) and Dongfeng Motor Corporation, have the capability and intention to buy some assets of the two crisis-plagued American automakers.â€

[Stephen Eisel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5SRyG6UR2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbe5ILIC ... re=related