Class1warrior

The Case for Making Bigger Cars

BTW, remember the Bush $100,000 tax breaks for heavy vehicles purchased by businesses? The tax break was intended to apply to big trucks used in construction, for example. What happened was that businesses such as doctors, accountants, and probably Wall Street brokers and salesmen bought up those Hummers and Navigators and Escalades.

The Case for Making Bigger Cars

It's amazing how much ignorance passes for opinion these days. If we allowed cars designed for EU safety standards into the US, how long do you think it would take for someone to sue that auto maker for selling an unsafe vehicle?
But you can bet that the Detroit carmakers are bringing EU cars here if they think will sell well in the USA as fast as they can. It takes awhile to certify them for safety and tailpipe emissions and fuel economy. It can't happen in days or weeks, it takes months to a year or more.
If you remember, there were some fine European models brought here in the past, but they didn't sell well. They weren't "American" enough. Americans didn't want to buy them back in the days of cheap oil.

Say No to the Auto Industry Beggars

Speaking of viability, all of the automakers, Japanese included, have capacitized for the expected annual sales of something like 15 million vehicles. Total capacity in the industry is about 20 million, including the newly constructed transplants. If auto sales were at 15M, the Detroit companies would be making money. But people aren't buying cars due to the economic turmoil, and they aren't buying trucks due to the inflated gas price shock of the last year. This is the part of the equation that cannot be blamed on, or controlled by, either the auto execs or the UAW or the salaried employees.

So let's get the economy back on track, car sales back up to 15 million, and the bridge loans will be paid back with interest. Economic repair and stabilization is something that the new administration intends to do. (With a healthy dose of regulatory reform of the financial industry.)

Say No to the Auto Industry Beggars

As an auto insider, I can tell you that the average worker can cost the company a lot. However, the people who can throw real money away are the ones who squander billions of dollars on their cowboy schemes and product plans. If you want to find out who have brought the auto companies to their knees (begging as you artfully put it), you better start looking at the board rooms, the ill-conceived product plans, and the wreckless attempts at empire building within the senior management ranks. Just don't try to blame the workers for the sins of the executives, the graduates of the Ivy league business schools. They learn how to gamble big money.

Say No to the Auto Industry Beggars

As to the authors points that seem to be taken straight from talk radio, there seems to be no shame in publishing propaganda and outright lies and deception. I suspect the real motive behind this author and many talk show hosts is to destroy the unions and the middle class that the unions helped to create.

Say No to the Auto Industry Beggars

What the government could give the American automakers is a contract to build something with that money. For example, 100,000 wind turbines, or 100,000 hybrid-electric-CNG powered small busses. That would keep the factories open, the employees working and paying taxes, and the government would get, in return, physical assets that would benefit the entire country. And it would avoit thousands of additional unemployed workers, defaulted mortgages, lost income taxes, and social disruption.