C-in-C or Micro-rmanager?Follow

No nation's "called on" the US for military assistance.

managerial yeah, i fail at spelling :(

No doubt. Which is different from them requesting our intervention. Did Kuwait ask us to come over? I had forgotten about them (so I may have been wrong with my '40s remark) although I thought that was more of a global "We gotta do something" with or without Kuwait's request.

Anyway, back to GM, I was reading a blog article about GM's problems and how they were a long ways coming. He posits that the problem isn't so much the unions now (not that they don't have room to compromise) but that, in the 1950's GM was happy to cut these deals with the unions where they'd pay lower wages then for sizable retirement/pension/health care packages down the line. It was an immediate gain for an eventual cost. The bill has been building up for the last couple decades though and it's getting too heavy for GM to bear. But GM wasn't bullied into those agreements in the 1950's -- they picked the option that gave them the most immediate gratification.

Did you miss the last 6 months or so?

Spoiler Alert!
SpoilerBecause it is better than the alternative.

Same reason I gave last fall: without the US automotive industry, heavy manufacturing in the United States is largely dead and I don't think that's a good thing. I'm open to other suggestions on how to keep domestic heavy manufacturing alive but that's my biggest issue with it.

There's also the matter of ~260,000 people losing their jobs (and effects on supporting businesses) but that's actually secondary in my mind. Not that it's unimportant, it just doesn't rank at the top.

Looking to Unionisation and workers' benefits as a cause for the Big 3's failures is like blaming someone's Acne for their death in a train wreck.

There are two simple reasons why the US Automotive industry is down the toilet:
1: Crap quality
2: Nobody's buying cars

I'm sure someone can argue that unionisation defended indefensibly shoddy workmanship, but in Europe, US cars are defined by the anecdotes of dealers taking delivery of US cars with a half-eaten sammich and an empty coke bottle in the foot well despite the "Quality Control" sticker on the window.

That and they become confused by any road that isn't as straight as s straight thing that's just been straightened.

Yeah, but Smash, the UAW-- and the CEOs of their respective automobile companies --killed the goose that laid the golden eggs long ago, in the mid-60's I seem to recall.

Popular myth, completely false, of course, but popular.


Oh, it seemed like a good idea at the time from their perspective, I'm sure. But quotas, early retirement pensions, health care until the grave, shoddy workmanship, institutionalized and purposeful early obsolesence of their product, and the car business in general selling to the American consumer vehicles without a view to the future (Hummers and SUVs for example). Add to that shareholders who got used to quarterly financials rather than yearly and the immediacy of profits NOW overrode any commonsense towards the long view.


I must have missed the part where AFL-CIO was put in charge of accounting and vehicle design by GM. When did that occur, '67? '68?


This crisis is a long time in coming-- and I come from a family that hails from Detroit. While I am sympathetic to auto industry workers, their's is a legacy born from excess and greed 40+ years ago.


No, theirs is a legacy born from a lack of solidarity in the American working class. Labor's made mistakes, to be sure, but it's "failings" in the US are about 97% attributable to the average working class American being selfish and incapable of seeing the long term value of collective bargaining as their only means of competing on a level playing field with the wealthy. The BIG LIE that wealth is the result of hard work in the US sells well, and not only to the wealthy.

I say retool GM plants to manufacture windmills, but I'm one of the tiny minority of people that think a hillside dotted with modern windmills looks ******* cool.

Seriously, though, it'd help the energy crisis and give 'em something productive to do while they wallow in Chaper 11 this summer.

Interesting note. The company I work for has been about 80-85% automotive since the 80s. We did have some office furniture work, but that wasn't very big. Some of our newest jobs we are getting are for Windspires

I believe it's net worth Ari. Which means that house they bought 10 years ago for $250,000 that's gone up to $1.25 mil is helping to account for that.

Of course, there's the possibility that I could be wrong, but I'll never acknowledge it if I am.