"Eisboch" wrote in message
...

"Boater" wrote in message
...
Eisboch wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message
...
Eisboch wrote:
"JR North" wrote in message
...
Gas your pigs up while you can. Not gonna tow Cruis'n Rulz! to the
pump. Gonna just get 5 gal at a time and fill her up at home. Don't
expect the prices will hold till next spring. If you wait, you might
just find it back to $4
JR


Nobody likes a spoilsport.

You're gonna give "O" some ideas of things to raise taxes on in order
to force you to
buy an oversized golf cart which is what he's gonna force Ford, GM and
Chrysler to build if they want a bailout.

Eisboch

Heaven forbid U.S. car makers produce mostly high quality, smaller,
fuel efficient cars that people want to buy and dump most of the
oversized, overpowered, mediocre quality V8's behemoths that get 13
mpg. Or less.


Again, you get it wrong. If the vast majority of people wanted to buy
smaller, fuel efficient cars,
Detroit would have been be turning them out by the millions for years.

That may change (and it should), but the point is .... Detroit builds
what people buy.

Eisboch






Apparently Detroit builds what people don't what to buy.

sigh

Correct. This year. Or, more accurately the past 6 months.

Eisboch


Look at the vehicles from Honda, Toyota and Nissan. They are big, just like
the Detroit iron. The Sequoia is as big as a full size Chevy Tahoe or
Expedition. I think the Nissan Titan looks bigger than my 3/4 T Chevy
diesel truck. The difference is about $39 an hour labor costs. About $80
for the Big 3 vs. $41 for the imports. Mostly in retiree and medical costs
for the retirees. The imports have not been here long enough to build up a
large retirement force. As well as the union negotiated pay for no work.
GM has about 12,000 on a job bank program. Full pay for 10 years of no
work. Let the Big 3 go bankrupt. Happens to lots of companies when they
fail to compete. They will not go away, someone else will take over. The
retirees will get screwed and may get less money, but they will just need to
share the wealth.

On Nov 12, 7:49*pm, "Calif Bill" wrote:

... *As well as the union negotiated pay for no work.

You blame unions for asking for it but not management for giving it?
Interesting.

On Nov 12, 10:40*pm, tin cup wrote:
wrote:
On Nov 12, 4:38 pm, "Eisboch" wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message

...

Eisboch wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message
...
Eisboch wrote:
"JR North" wrote in message
...
Gas your pigs up while you can. Not gonna tow Cruis'n Rulz! to the
pump. Gonna just get 5 gal at a time and fill her up at home. Don't
expect the prices will hold till next spring. If you wait, you might
just find it back to $4
JR
Nobody likes a spoilsport.
You're gonna give "O" some ideas of things to raise taxes on in order
to force you to
buy an oversized golf cart which is what he's gonna force Ford, GM and
Chrysler to build if they want a bailout.
Eisboch
Heaven forbid U.S. car makers produce mostly high quality, smaller, fuel
efficient cars that people want to buy and dump most of the oversized,
overpowered, mediocre quality V8's behemoths that get 13 mpg. Or less.
Again, you get it wrong. *If the vast majority of people wanted to buy
smaller, fuel efficient cars,
Detroit would *have been be turning them out by the millions for years.
That may change (and it should), but the point is .... Detroit builds
what people buy.
Eisboch
Apparently Detroit builds what people don't what to buy.
sigh

Correct. *This year. *Or, more accurately the past 6 months.

Eisboch

Ford and GM took a look at trying to compete with Honda, Toyota and
Nissan in the small, efficient cars ten years ago. *They were
completely unable to compete because of the labor cost in their
vehicles compared to their competion, thanks to the UAW.

Their only way to make enough money to continue to meet the finacial
obligation forced on them by union labor was to continue to build high
profit SUVs and trucks. *Now that that's over, the UAW slobs with
barely a high school education living on easy street may have to
tighten their belts to allow the auto makers to survive. *Heh.. will
that happen? *Of course not... the unions say screw everyone else, we
got ours!

UAW slobs??
How white of you. In your world only Investment Bankers should make a
decent living.

Huh? White? Race has nothing to do with it, but interesting that you
would interject it into this discussion. Also, since I'm a college
graduate, and I work for a living, why would investment bankers have
anything to do with this? Smoke another
dooby, dude.

The average wage was around 58,000.00 a year. So you want them to make
20,000.00 or 10,000.00?
Of course not. But why should the average high school UAW emplyed
graduate make as much as an average college graduate? And have
complete retirement, medical, etc bestowed on them when the vast
majority of the county is expected to plan for their own retirement
with savings, etc?

The UAW is not the problem. The problem is the bean counters building
cars that are not desirable as we want at too high a markup and interest
rates that may be, in total as much again as the price of the vehicle.
Take another toke. Unless you're totally worthless, you can get a
vehicle for 0% financing. And the markup? It's to cover the UAW
union forced benefits and retirement that *has* to be covered with
every vehicle sold. That's why they can't compete... duh.

Global Wall Street demands for too high a return on investment, and then
their gambling with worthless, imaginary values causing a collapse is
the problem.

Thank the Dems for that... sub-prime loans they protected, remember?

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over
loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average
age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual
truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to
abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to
complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence,
from dependence back again to bondage."

Selfishness defines today's unions. The Dems are promising the most
benefits, and the sheeple are voting. The USA is on the downward
spiral.

On Nov 12, 10:43*pm, Boater wrote:
wrote:
On Nov 12, 4:38 pm, "Eisboch" wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message

...

Eisboch wrote:
"Boater" wrote in message
...
Eisboch wrote:
"JR North" wrote in message
...
Gas your pigs up while you can. Not gonna tow Cruis'n Rulz! to the
pump. Gonna just get 5 gal at a time and fill her up at home. Don't
expect the prices will hold till next spring. If you wait, you might
just find it back to $4
JR
Nobody likes a spoilsport.
You're gonna give "O" some ideas of things to raise taxes on in order
to force you to
buy an oversized golf cart which is what he's gonna force Ford, GM and
Chrysler to build if they want a bailout.
Eisboch
Heaven forbid U.S. car makers produce mostly high quality, smaller, fuel
efficient cars that people want to buy and dump most of the oversized,
overpowered, mediocre quality V8's behemoths that get 13 mpg. Or less.
Again, you get it wrong. *If the vast majority of people wanted to buy
smaller, fuel efficient cars,
Detroit would *have been be turning them out by the millions for years.
That may change (and it should), but the point is .... Detroit builds
what people buy.
Eisboch
Apparently Detroit builds what people don't what to buy.
sigh

Correct. *This year. *Or, more accurately the past 6 months.

Eisboch

Ford and GM took a look at trying to compete with Honda, Toyota and
Nissan in the small, efficient cars ten years ago. *They were
completely unable to compete because of the labor cost in their
vehicles compared to their competion, thanks to the UAW.

Their only way to make enough money to continue to meet the finacial
obligation forced on them by union labor was to continue to build high
profit SUVs and trucks. *Now that that's over, the UAW slobs with
barely a high school education living on easy street may have to
tighten their belts to allow the auto makers to survive. *Heh.. will
that happen? *Of course not... the unions say screw everyone else, we
got ours!

Such hatred for the working man and woman...typical.

Only if they band together under a union flag and take down an
American institution such as GM in the name of their personal greed.

"br" wrote in message
...
On Nov 12, 7:49 pm, "Calif Bill" wrote:

... As well as the union negotiated pay for no work.

You blame unions for asking for it but not management for giving it?
Interesting.

Both are guilty. Let both fail.

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:26:46 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:

That may change (and it should), but the point is .... Detroit builds what
people buy.

Right up until they don't.

Detroit made two big mistakes:

1. They thought they could keep pushing profitable big iron forever.

2. They could never figure out how to build a small, high quality,
economical car at a reasonable price. Given the high cost of their
labor content it may have been impossible but they never really tried.

Is there any reason why GM could not have produced something like a
Toyota Corolla or a small pickup truck even if they had to build it
offshore? People have certainly bought plenty of them from Toyota so
we can't claim the demand wasn't there.

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:40:09 -0500, tin cup wrote:

The average wage was around 58,000.00 a year.

That's misleading, benefits add at least another 20,000. That is
pretty good pay for unskiled labor, about 2 or 3 times what most
factory workers get.

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:30:19 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:26:46 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:

That may change (and it should), but the point is .... Detroit builds what
people buy.

Right up until they don't.

Detroit made two big mistakes:

1. They thought they could keep pushing profitable big iron forever.

2. They could never figure out how to build a small, high quality,
economical car at a reasonable price. Given the high cost of their
labor content it may have been impossible but they never really tried.

Is there any reason why GM could not have produced something like a
Toyota Corolla or a small pickup truck even if they had to build it
offshore? People have certainly bought plenty of them from Toyota so
we can't claim the demand wasn't there.

Good points although I could argue that point #2 is somewhat
disengenous.

Detroit could have developed small and efficient cars because they
built them in Europe. When we were in Ireland a few years ago, all
the taxis in Dublin were Fords and very similar to the Focus in size
only more efficient. Taxi drivers there told me they got 34 mph on
average - which is pretty damn decent.

I understand that the problem with importing these cars to our side of
the pond was that they wouldn't meet California emissions standars
and, believe it or not, California emissions standards are the defacto
driver for the US auto industry - it was too expensive to retrofit
them to meet our standards.

I seem to remember reading recently, that 20-25% of all cars sold in
the US are sold in California - it would make sense if the percentage
is that high, their standards would become defacto for the rest of the
nation.

I still maintain that we can have our cake and eat it too. All we
need to do is switch to diesel/electric trucks and do the same for the
bigger cars. I read something the other day about GE's Evolution
diesel/electric locomotive, 12 cylinder turbo charged diesel engine
producing 6300 BHP and something like 6000 THP (traction wheel
horsepower) which can move a ridiculous amount of freight (in the
order of 50 million pounds or something like that - might even have
been higher) 6 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel.

You can't convince that the lessons learned in developing that type of
transportation power can't be used in developing a diesel/electric
capable of moving a F-350 around town efficiently. :)

"Canuck57" wrote in message
...


Insightful. It is really called deflation. The opposite of inflation.
With the market loosing so much value, people losing jobs, the prices
people will pay is going with it. The right "sustainable" price for oil
would be about $70-85 barrel.

Sounds good at first glance, but it is in reality a sure sign of
depression. It means that homes will further decrease in value and even
more people will "walk away" from their debts. In effect, the US economy
value is equalizing to India, China, South America...

This will lead to total collapse as how does the US government pay for a
12 trillion debt in an outright stalled economy? Government prints money
like a crack junky shoots dope.

Add the insatiable spend-crazy lust for governments to bail out companies
like GM and the banks paints a bleak picture for the US economy. Very
bleak indeed. Every time the government announces a bail out we get a
market tumble.


Good post. You seem to have a handle on the economics of this mess.

Eisboch

"D.Duck" wrote in message
...


My hope is that the GM/Ford/Chrysler problems are resolved (if resolvable)
in bankruptcy, not throwing more tax payer dollars at them.


Duck, I couldn't agree with you more. Chapter 11 isn't permanent. It
allows for "reorganization" which is exactly what the auto industry needs to
do right now. Revise business plans, products and re-negotiate the union
contracts under the watchful eye of a bankruptcy judge.

Handing them a pile of taxpayer money, calling it a government "investment"
just to keep them in business under their current organizational structures
won't do a damn thing.

Eisboch