CNN.com had a front page article saying GM and Chrysler would be asking the government for an additional 26 billion dollars due to low demand of their products. Obviously, GM and Chrysler will really be asking you and me for our money to get them out of their own problems. From two perspectives, an American as well as a Designer, I am frustrated with these companies...and other American car companies asking for us to bail them out of their own problems. I do recognize that the car industry, whether we agree with it or not, is a pillar of our economy...and that to do nothing would simply destroy the economy even more in some ways, but come on GM/Ford/Chrysler...do you really not get it?
Before studying Architecture, I studied Business and Design. I remember sitting in Marketing class and the professor would pull out newspaper ads showing Chevrolet's new stronger, faster, bigger than ever truck right next to a foreign automaker's ad describing efficiency, style and performance as the hallmark of their design.
Throughout the US and the rest of the world, the latter of the two have proven to be more desirable. It doesn't take a top level executive to begin to see that. I live in Texas as well...sure we have a lot of trucks, but even here plenty of people are driving smaller more efficient vehicles.
With that said, why should your money and my money go to help US Auto manufacturers after years of design and development of products that anyone could see are less desirable than let's say...honda, toyota, etc...
I love America, but I am really really put out with this situation. I think mainly I am due to the fact as a designer, my opinion is that these companies made really poor design decisions in every way-compromising on many aspects of what makes good design...and then asking to be bailed out.
We, as consumers, have the option to purchase what we want...many have looked elsewhere for cars...my wife and I have, my family has, my friends, etc...but now, it is really going to effect us as we all get to help pay for these companies bad decisions. $90 a person in America right now to help them out.
We should bail them out because they were extorted by Labor for 40 years and forced by threat of strike and shutdown to sign absurd labor agreements such as giving the widows of assembly line workers full benefits and salries - so 25, 30 years after the guy retired, then died, someone in Michigan is getting full pay. So yes, because our congress people with the aid of the mob and Hoffa musscled the Big 3, we should now be bailing them out for our stupidity of burdening them with legacy costs they could never have afforded.
my grandfather retired from GM in the late 70's early 80's, he hung doors on oldsmobiles. he died in 87 or 88, my grandmother died 2 or three years later. so i am willing to be, that if she got one plumb nickel, she had little time to enjoy it. now, the UAW was useful, but now most work is automated, so the vice like grip that my grandpa had - one that would break most tough guys down in pain - is of a bygone era, and hence i would agree, that unions should shoulder a lot of the blame. my grandfather however, he's what made men, men.
pointing the finger of blame is of little use and little relevance right now anyway. I'd be more sympathetic to a bailout if I thought they had a viable plan for getting out of the hole they're in, but at this point their only game plan seems to be to keep going back to the taxpayer to ask for more handouts.
Its completely valid to point the blame since theres a bill, passed in the house, to authorise card check voting and severley penalize any corporation for "avoidance" if they try to out manouver the unionisation of the company. Government arbertrators will give 120 days to any company to come to agreement with the union and if they cant the government will appoint an intermediate management structure until an agreement can be reached. This is seriously wrong and will lead to our entire econmomy being GM'd
i wouldnt be surprised if honda/toyota/ford starts to buy out the plants from gm/chry..
most factory work is unskilled labor..... unless your a welder or in robotics... theres a reason why people went to college instead of factories/vice versa
only two thoughts: chrysler is a private company - why not see if their ownership group will pony up or raise some cash? otherwise, we're just bailing them out personally. i say let them die.
second - why aren't we getting something for all this? really, i mean if we're going to hand over 14 billion to gm, why not just buy 14 billion's worth of cars? my problem with the bailout is that they're not using the money to create something, they're just using it to pay for this crazy, bloated infrastructure they have. all the supposed trickle down still doesn't happen in this scenario - if they're building less vehicles, they're buying less parts, less raw material, doing less advertising, less everything. the dealers get shafted - i mean, we're not saving the whole chain, we're just saving one part which is going to downsize so much that they'll still destroy the downstream manufacturing stream. so, why not get a few hundred thousand cars/trucks/whatever out of this deal? make them all hybrids- that will do more to spur them into action than any other possible scenario. raffle them all off for 1 buck a ticket. you might raise a billion of that money back immediately - i'd buy 10 bucks worth for a shot at a new car right now.
this scenario also gets to the heart of our economic woes - large, durable goods (and construction) have just fallen off the sales map. people will still buy a 200 dollar iphone, but they won't buy a 20K car.
Chrysler's owners have plenty of cash, but why gamble with your own money when you have ours?
I would like to see them go bankrupt, that would eliminate the ties to the unions (I believe). While I am all for fairness, of course, the fact that part of the stumbling blocks are negotiating with unions at this point. If they die, so does the union, does no one see that?
But there's also the jobs and social unrest that would occur, which our country can't take. What's another 100 billion or two?
Ideal situation would be bankruptcy, gov't takes them over, fires upper management, eliminates the unions, then sells to the private sector. I am sure there are tons of people that would buy them once the bloat got eliminated.
Hybrid's or whatever will be hard to sell with oil at $35. Sad, but that's how it goes.
outed - that was a theoretical option - give everyone in the US new cars! But that would only help the little guy. There was also teh debate that we are giving Citi more than it is worth, theoretically we should own the entire thing by now, but that ain't what the gov't wants. Also, it is 14 billion they can use, 14 billion in cars is not 14 billion in cash.
In a wired article, former senator michael dukakis offered the suggestion of having the car companies make buses instead of cars, the only drawback being that the factories would have to be overhauled. Here is the link: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/01/governor-mike-d.html
Look, I'm from Michigan, and many of my 'peeps will be in a lot of trouble if the big 3 take a hit...but...
...just look what they've done to Detroit and Flint.
these companies don't care about america, they care about profits. They've raped the cities and people of Michigan (and probably elsewhere in this country) and produced an inferior product that is killing our environment.
What would happen if ALL the car companies went out of business?
- save the environment
- our communities would be closer because we couldn't travel
- we might actually know our neighbors
- regional food production
- etc
really, I say, let them burn, they are last centuries technology, and it's time for them to go.
which they won't allow to happen on a fully democratic government's watch.
i wasn't saying that we give a free car to everyone in america, just that the government should be actually purchasing hard goods with the money, not just merely giving it to them. their whole problem is no one is buying their cars, right? why aren't we buying cars then? heck, you could outfit the entire u.s. govt. fleet with that much money. so why not get something in return? what am i missing with this??
Feb 19, 09 12:56 pm ·
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GM & Chrysler...why did you not see it coming?
CNN.com had a front page article saying GM and Chrysler would be asking the government for an additional 26 billion dollars due to low demand of their products. Obviously, GM and Chrysler will really be asking you and me for our money to get them out of their own problems. From two perspectives, an American as well as a Designer, I am frustrated with these companies...and other American car companies asking for us to bail them out of their own problems. I do recognize that the car industry, whether we agree with it or not, is a pillar of our economy...and that to do nothing would simply destroy the economy even more in some ways, but come on GM/Ford/Chrysler...do you really not get it?
Before studying Architecture, I studied Business and Design. I remember sitting in Marketing class and the professor would pull out newspaper ads showing Chevrolet's new stronger, faster, bigger than ever truck right next to a foreign automaker's ad describing efficiency, style and performance as the hallmark of their design.
Throughout the US and the rest of the world, the latter of the two have proven to be more desirable. It doesn't take a top level executive to begin to see that. I live in Texas as well...sure we have a lot of trucks, but even here plenty of people are driving smaller more efficient vehicles.
With that said, why should your money and my money go to help US Auto manufacturers after years of design and development of products that anyone could see are less desirable than let's say...honda, toyota, etc...
I love America, but I am really really put out with this situation. I think mainly I am due to the fact as a designer, my opinion is that these companies made really poor design decisions in every way-compromising on many aspects of what makes good design...and then asking to be bailed out.
We, as consumers, have the option to purchase what we want...many have looked elsewhere for cars...my wife and I have, my family has, my friends, etc...but now, it is really going to effect us as we all get to help pay for these companies bad decisions. $90 a person in America right now to help them out.
We should bail them out because they were extorted by Labor for 40 years and forced by threat of strike and shutdown to sign absurd labor agreements such as giving the widows of assembly line workers full benefits and salries - so 25, 30 years after the guy retired, then died, someone in Michigan is getting full pay. So yes, because our congress people with the aid of the mob and Hoffa musscled the Big 3, we should now be bailing them out for our stupidity of burdening them with legacy costs they could never have afforded.
Okay. I can definitely see that point. Wow.
But giving in so much to pressure from labor was shortsighted.
my grandfather retired from GM in the late 70's early 80's, he hung doors on oldsmobiles. he died in 87 or 88, my grandmother died 2 or three years later. so i am willing to be, that if she got one plumb nickel, she had little time to enjoy it. now, the UAW was useful, but now most work is automated, so the vice like grip that my grandpa had - one that would break most tough guys down in pain - is of a bygone era, and hence i would agree, that unions should shoulder a lot of the blame. my grandfather however, he's what made men, men.
pointing the finger of blame is of little use and little relevance right now anyway. I'd be more sympathetic to a bailout if I thought they had a viable plan for getting out of the hole they're in, but at this point their only game plan seems to be to keep going back to the taxpayer to ask for more handouts.
The thing that iritates me about this now is that they are begging for more money and then still plan to lay 50,000 more people off.
Its completely valid to point the blame since theres a bill, passed in the house, to authorise card check voting and severley penalize any corporation for "avoidance" if they try to out manouver the unionisation of the company. Government arbertrators will give 120 days to any company to come to agreement with the union and if they cant the government will appoint an intermediate management structure until an agreement can be reached. This is seriously wrong and will lead to our entire econmomy being GM'd
i wouldnt be surprised if honda/toyota/ford starts to buy out the plants from gm/chry..
most factory work is unskilled labor..... unless your a welder or in robotics... theres a reason why people went to college instead of factories/vice versa
only two thoughts: chrysler is a private company - why not see if their ownership group will pony up or raise some cash? otherwise, we're just bailing them out personally. i say let them die.
second - why aren't we getting something for all this? really, i mean if we're going to hand over 14 billion to gm, why not just buy 14 billion's worth of cars? my problem with the bailout is that they're not using the money to create something, they're just using it to pay for this crazy, bloated infrastructure they have. all the supposed trickle down still doesn't happen in this scenario - if they're building less vehicles, they're buying less parts, less raw material, doing less advertising, less everything. the dealers get shafted - i mean, we're not saving the whole chain, we're just saving one part which is going to downsize so much that they'll still destroy the downstream manufacturing stream. so, why not get a few hundred thousand cars/trucks/whatever out of this deal? make them all hybrids- that will do more to spur them into action than any other possible scenario. raffle them all off for 1 buck a ticket. you might raise a billion of that money back immediately - i'd buy 10 bucks worth for a shot at a new car right now.
this scenario also gets to the heart of our economic woes - large, durable goods (and construction) have just fallen off the sales map. people will still buy a 200 dollar iphone, but they won't buy a 20K car.
Chrysler's owners have plenty of cash, but why gamble with your own money when you have ours?
I would like to see them go bankrupt, that would eliminate the ties to the unions (I believe). While I am all for fairness, of course, the fact that part of the stumbling blocks are negotiating with unions at this point. If they die, so does the union, does no one see that?
But there's also the jobs and social unrest that would occur, which our country can't take. What's another 100 billion or two?
Ideal situation would be bankruptcy, gov't takes them over, fires upper management, eliminates the unions, then sells to the private sector. I am sure there are tons of people that would buy them once the bloat got eliminated.
Hybrid's or whatever will be hard to sell with oil at $35. Sad, but that's how it goes.
outed - that was a theoretical option - give everyone in the US new cars! But that would only help the little guy. There was also teh debate that we are giving Citi more than it is worth, theoretically we should own the entire thing by now, but that ain't what the gov't wants. Also, it is 14 billion they can use, 14 billion in cars is not 14 billion in cash.
In a wired article, former senator michael dukakis offered the suggestion of having the car companies make buses instead of cars, the only drawback being that the factories would have to be overhauled. Here is the link: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/01/governor-mike-d.html
If you 'need' 5 billion dollars you are NOT a 'viable' company. Stop beggin'...you can't make people buy your cars.
Look, I'm from Michigan, and many of my 'peeps will be in a lot of trouble if the big 3 take a hit...but...
...just look what they've done to Detroit and Flint.
these companies don't care about america, they care about profits. They've raped the cities and people of Michigan (and probably elsewhere in this country) and produced an inferior product that is killing our environment.
What would happen if ALL the car companies went out of business?
- save the environment
- our communities would be closer because we couldn't travel
- we might actually know our neighbors
- regional food production
- etc
really, I say, let them burn, they are last centuries technology, and it's time for them to go.
If all the car companies went out of business we'd have Mad Max.
Buy a gun and a lot of canned food and water.
closed down GM,
get rid of the workers union,
open new company,
hired back the workers with wages "BACK TO NORMAL"
problem solved!
CLOSE UP SHOP AND RE-ORGANIZE.
GET OUT OF ALL B.S. CONTRACTS
TRIM OFF THE FAT
AND I DONT WANT TO HEAR UNION WORKERS BITCH EITHER. LOOKS LIKE THEY MIGHT HAVE TO RELEARN SOME THINGS OR ACTUALLY LEARN SOMETHING
correct me if i'm wrong,
autoworkers US$65 dollars/hr... what da fxck!
that's double an architect's salary in asia! WHAT DA FxCK!
They will need to declare bankruptcy before they can get rid of the unions.
which they won't allow to happen on a fully democratic government's watch.
i wasn't saying that we give a free car to everyone in america, just that the government should be actually purchasing hard goods with the money, not just merely giving it to them. their whole problem is no one is buying their cars, right? why aren't we buying cars then? heck, you could outfit the entire u.s. govt. fleet with that much money. so why not get something in return? what am i missing with this??
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