huskerbob

Cars: What It Means to 'Buy American'

How can you support American manufacturers if you only buy American? Buy the best quality or value, and if they have any brains they will make competitive products. Look at what protectionism did for American car companies: they struggled to catch up through the 70's and 80's. Foreign competition gradually pushed them to make better products.
Do US manufacturers use only US suppliers? Of course not.
Please stop treating the auto manufacturers as if they are run by idiot man children. They are perfectly capable of making competitive products at competitive prices. They don't need protection and jingoism, they need to make more of what people want to buy, and that won't happen if they are coddled.
We have lost a lot of manufacturing because Americans, for good reason, won't work for $1.00/hour, or make cars for $12/hour as they do in Mexico. Let's concentrate on what we do well, let's be competitive! To blindly buy American does not help American companies to be competitive in the long run. If you want to see a car built with no foreign competition, go buy a Lada. Or an Edsel.

Li-ion Batteries and How Cheap Beat Cool in the Chevy Volt

Thanks for an informative article. Good information and conclusion. Rising lithium prices add one more disadvantage.
I would hazard to guess that widespread adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles will only occur with rising oil prices. Consumers will be making a value choice as opposed to an environmentally conscious one. Cost per mile driven may become a selling point much as horsepower was just recently.

Take a Stand Against Government Spending

BrianZach, the point is that all this spending will not and is not preventing an economic meltdown, which should be obvious to anyone.
An economy based entirely on debt: consumers dependent on debt to compensate for decline in real income; companies not viable without continuous issuance of new debt; local, state, and federal governments completely dependent on debt to provide even basic functions, and now sustaining more debt to bail out the debtors by giving them high quality debt in exchange for garbage debt to encourage them to continue lending even more! As if the problem will be solved by borrowing more money. Sigh.
At some point, there is too much debt. Then who is going to lend to us?
Please realize that you cannot keep piling debt on debt forever. Rip off the bandaid now, get assets (homes, equities, cars, etc.) down to affordable prices, and start over.
It will happen sooner or later. There is no getting around it by making more idiotic loans. Why prolong the agony?
But if you think bailouts with borrowed money are great for the economy, please put all your money in a Dow index, because you will get to enjoy trillions of dollars of stimulus and bailouts for the forseeable future. Bon appetite!