What about these gifts to Toyota

Yup! I fix what the Chinese screw up.

 

Already have been. Three times. Every time I pull myself up and start over.

Politics has NOTHING to do with economics. Toyota builds cars in the US
for $48 an hour, wages and benefits. They are making a profit.

GM builds cars for $75 an hour, wages and benefits. They are losing money.
The GM car business has been losing money for years. GM has been making
money on its financial business. Now that financials have fallen flat, GMs
loss shows through.

The workers have to be competitive or price themselves out of jobs. Also,
GM needs to make cars people want to buy. They move too slow.

 

You seemm to be concerned with workers. I have taken cuts in pay to keep a
job, and have been rewarded. If UAW workers took a cut, cars would cost
less and the Big Three would win.

Too bad. I'm talking Evansville, IN and Georgetown, KY.
Compete or lose. Toyota knows that.

Yup, and the wrong thing to be basing a business on. Screw the investors.
If you build a good product, you'll get the results, and the shareholders
will be happy, too. GM is only interested in keeping the investors happy,
and screw the customer.

It finally caught up with them.

Typing that last paragraph has made me change my mind: screw the bailout,
let them go bankrupt and learn the hard way. They made the bed, let them
lay in it.

Yup. Took an Asian Studies class and wrote the final paper on Toyota and
the culture of the business and it's workers. Lots of research into the
issue.

They're not saints: there was one case where a worker was injured and more
or less fired. However, they gave him a severance and let him stay in his
factory home as long as he wants. He just couldn't work for Toyota anymore.

 

*ALL* of the above.

 

I give another guy hell about using blogs as resources.

You pull up a Union Dog article. What do you expect them to write?

Do some real research. I hurt myself falling off my chair laughing!

 

Aha. Me, too.

 

Back when the Unions started, it was a good thing. Ford also had guards in
the restrooms. If you took a bathroom break, there had better be something
to flush or you were fired. There was a line of men outside waiting to
take your job.

Times have changed. Both the union and management are complicit. The UAW
targeted one of the big three each contract time. Rather than risk a strike
and lost sales to competitors, they went along with the union demands and
just added that to the price of the car. It worked for many years until
other companies (imports) started selling decent cars for less money.
Remember the $1900 Beetle? I paid that much of a used Corvair at the time.

If it was 1930, I'd be on the line helping to organized the shop. In 1970 I
saw corruptness in some unions and saw how they could be a big detriment.
Today, many companies recognize the value of good employees and give them a
good wage and benefits. The only thing a union would do for some workers is
to take the dues from their paychecks. Yes, there are still some sweat
shops that need some help, but far less than 50 years ago.

 

GM management team up with UAW to screw the workers.
I will be glad to see all those arrogant spoiled bastards lose their
jobs.
The workers will rise in new and vigorated comapanies without the
bastard assholes.

 

Hehe. Personal psychological issues always show up in the end.

--Vic

 

Having lived in MS for 3 years in the early 90s, any number in terms of
annual salary is probably 2 ot 3 times that in another locale of the U.S.
That is, 250K is equivalent it 500K to 750K in other regions of the U.S.
Yes, MS is a very poor state in terms of cost of housing and so forth. So
are their incomes. AL and W VA aren't much better.

All 3 states prostitute land, taxes on that land, and other ways to these
car manufacturers for little return in the way of jobs for the state
inhabitants. At the surface, it appears similar to the bank bailout for
intention to clear outstanding mortgages. So mch money for so little
apparent return.
--
Dave

2008 Focus , 5 spd no frills coupe- to date per fillup - 33 mpg low - 39 mpg
high.

How much CO footprint to remove and transport basic materials for batteries
and to manufacture the batteries for the Ford Fusion and any other hybrid?

 

Please lift your eyes from your own parochial vision for a moment.

For starters, most of these tax deals work something like this. The company
comes in, gets 6 years of property tax deferrals. Then at the end of the 6
years the company tells the local government that if the local government
starts
taxing them at the normal rate, that they won't make money any longer, and
will have to close down the factory and move elsewhere. If the local
government
calls BS and refuses to extend the property tax deferrals anymore, than the
company does move - to the next local government that is willing to give
them
another 6 years of property tax deferrals.

In manufacturing by the time 6 years has rolled around, all the machinery
in the plant is essentially obsolete anyway, the product matrix has changed,
and the workflow has also changed, it's just as easy to build a new plant
with
new machines & new workflow as it is to stay in the existing one and
renovate it.

In the meantime the local infrastructure of homes, roads, police coverage
and so on, has to be paid for. And it's paid for by all of the homeowners
in
that municipality - the vast, vast majority of them NOT working for that
company, and NOT getting paid by it, and indeed, not even working at
businesses that have anything to do with it or it's employees.

The politicians that approve these deals are not doing it as a result of
economic analysis. They are doing it as Resume-builders because 4
years later they want to be running for some other political office and
they want to be able to point to job creation as their legacy. It's easy
to prove a decision you made created some jobs - but it's difficult to
prove that a decision a politician made ended some jobs. There's
even people still claiming that President Bush didn't make any decisions
that cost jobs, if you can believe it.

The end result of all of this is for the municipality to manage things,
they have to raise property and income taxes to a high rate - or let
police coverage get lower, school funding get lower, etc. So you either
end up with a slapped-together housing tract that ends up decaying 20
years later until the next hurricane comes through and the municipality
expects FEMA to pay for it, or you end up with housing tracts that
gentrify and price all of the young families out of town.

Also in the meantime the federal government is making payments to
cities - you probably didn't know that the feds do this, didn't you - and
because the cities are running short the feds pay out more and more
money. Then the Federal deficit goes through the roof.

However, the fact is that I really don't fault these manufacturing
businesses for doing this, and you know why? I'll tell you. It is because
every other civilized country in the world has nationalized healthcare,
and no other businesses anywhere else in the world have to fund
employee health care. As a result a business in the US already
out the door is competing with other businesses in other countries
that are getting giant government subsidies already - because their
employees are getting medical benefits from the government, not
the businesses.

The entire system is screwed. When a municipality gives away tax
revenue to a company through property tax deferrals, that lost money
is made up elsewhere in the economy and people who derive no
direct benefit from that company end up paying for it. Just as
the employees of the company getting the deferral are paying for
other companies deferrals that they derive no benefit from either.

The entire system is socialist, not capitalist. And the people claiming
that it's majority rule are lying. The fact is the vast majority of these
property tax deferral deals only become public well after the fact,
too late for any organized resistance to make it's case to the public
to stop the deal. Sure, the newspaper may run a few articles about
the great government giveaway and a few disgruntled taxpayers may
write letters, but by the time the next election happens, it's done and
forgotten.

Oh sure, if you don't like it you can move to another country. But
most other civilized countries are also socialist these days. So you
gain nothing, really - except that you likely don't have to listen to these
deluded fools like yourself who continue to claim that the US
federal, state & local governments are NOT socialist.

Ted

 

Nicely descibed: a race to the bottom.

 

Yeah. I woke up this morning and my first thought was about how much I hate
people from particular locations.

 

Taxes on regular land can be decreased through a rent-u-cow service.
One local person who saved money this way was Kemper Marley, a liquor
magnate, murderer (including by bomb), and good buddy of Cindy
McCain's family:

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/05-27-99/mailbag.htm

Yes, it says, "strategically placed cows."

Another tax loophole we had here exempted homes from all property
taxes, provided their owners parked their airplanes there.

 

Heavy alcohol consumption in the morning causes the absurd to appear
rational to its writer.

 

Back in the mid 1980s, former GM chairman Roger Smith boasted that
Saturns would be produced in a "lights out" factory, meaning a totally
automated one. By saying that, did Smith demonstrate having a
realistic concept of how Saturns were going to be made in the early
1990s, when the factory started production?

 

In practice you do, unless you pay no taxes.

 

That widely-quoted figure is wrong.

 

More like a vision of how every GM and Cerberus plant will be if the
bailout fails.... "lights out".

 

Check Lincoln Electric's production workers and how a decreasing-
piecework pay system can greatly increase worker output.

And the typical Roto-Rooter franchise holder makes more than the
average air conditioning mechanic, despite the latter's need for a
much higher level of skill. That's why that hero of the libertarians
and conservatives, Adam Smith, said that the free market wasn't the
answer to all economics matters.