Big trouble for Michigan (Detroit, Flint: relocate, estate, insurance)

[jimwoods]

More bad news, Michigan has two cities that top the list of most miserable places to live according to yahoo, but here is a link to GM has record losses.
Also I will try to find the artical that says that Canada has taken many detroit jobs because of the cost of health care. It costs 6k per car in the us for health care compared to canada which is 800 per car. Keeps GM more competitive by moving north.
GM Posts Biggest Annual US Auto Loss: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance (broken link)


America's Worst Cities - AOL Money & Finance

Flint is third on the list. For people thinking of moving to detroit and flint please read.

[downthathighway]

Canada has auto assembly jobs because pre-NAFTA they required a percentage of vehicles sold there also be built in Canada.
It's doubtful health care costs factored in the decision to build some autos there. Being national health care, no direct cost to the automakers. BUT since the taxes are higher to provide that healthcare, it certainly would result in a need for higher wages there.
Only recently on this forum we have had some relocate FROM Canada to Detroit due to better opportunities.(Lucky them,I know)
Its been no secret for several years that conditions in Detroit and Flint have worsened. Flint lost even more of their identity than Detroit with Buick's closing.

[jimwoods]

According to NPR it is health care costs that are moving jobs to canada. GM today offered to buy out 74 thousand hourly workers because of moving jobs elswhere.
I just read an artical about toyota having a easier time with costs because of not having health care as high as GM, cost is over 6500 per car for GM toyota was 500 a car with workers in Mississippi.
Health care is definetly a factor in where cars are built.

[Coldjensens]

GM has more trouble because its workers are older and it has more retired workers to provide health care for. Toyota will get there eventually. They just have no been big as long as GM has.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by jimwoods

More bad news, Michigan has two cities that top the list of most miserable places to live according to yahoo, but here is a link to GM has record losses.
Also I will try to find the artical that says that Canada has taken many detroit jobs because of the cost of health care. It costs 6k per car in the us for health care compared to canada which is 800 per car. Keeps GM more competitive by moving north.
GM Posts Biggest Annual US Auto Loss: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance (broken link)


America's Worst Cities - AOL Money & Finance

Flint is third on the list. For people thinking of moving to detroit and flint please read.

You forgot to mention that NY, Philadelphia, Chicago, LA, and Charlotte made the top 10. So basically, the majority of the US currently live in a top 10 miserable city/metro according to Forbes. I guess we should all move to Iowa City then.

[Nickc121]

You cannot deny that Detroit and Flint are dangerous places to live

[Coldjensens]

Depends on where in Detroit. I suppose Flint is probably the same. You could say the same about LA, but what would the people in Century City or Beverly Hills say about that?

[jimwoods]

Originally Posted by Cato the Elder

You forgot to mention that NY, Philadelphia, Chicago, LA, and Charlotte made the top 10. So basically, the majority of the US currently live in a top 10 miserable city/metro according to Forbes. I guess we should all move to Iowa City then.

Sugar coat it any way you want Detroit took first place, how much worse than the cities that did not make NO1 did it have to be to take that posistion?
GM being in business for so long has absoloutly nothing to do with its healt care problems. If you understood the real problem it is because GM in its UAW contracts has to give cradle to grave health care to its workers.
If we had universal health care, and it is only a mater of time before we do. It would take a lot of presure off of GM, although GM still does not make cars that can compete with Toyota,Honda, or Nissian.

[Coldjensens]

No. You are incorrect. GM has been a very large company for a very long time. Thus it has a very large number of retired workers and a very large number of older workers who cost more to insure.

Toyota is a relative newcomer to the auto giant circle. It has not had as much time to build a massive number of retired and older workers. It is more recently subject to the same obligations as GM to its workers. When they were all made in Japan and the workers had no rights, they did not have to make such promises. now they do. However Toyota was not as big at first, so they did not make these unwieldy promises to anywhere near the number of people that GM did, simply because they did not employ the same number of people.

So yes. Size matters. In fact it is the reason that the numbers are so different.

Why do you believe that universal heath care would in any way get GM out of its contractual obligations to retired workers? If we had Universal health care now, GM would still be required to provide insurance to its retired workers so that the could go to private providers (for better and faster care). GM promised ot insure them until they are dead and GM must insure them until they are dead. Universal health care will not change this, unless it results in more retired workers being dead sooner (which is possible, but for very complicated reasons).

You are correct in that if we had universal health care in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s, GM would not have had to make these promises. Instead we would have all been taxed at a 70% rate to pay for it.

[Nickc121]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

Depends on where in Detroit. I suppose Flint is probably the same. You could say the same about LA, but what would the people in Century City or Beverly Hills say about that?

Sure.....you could say that about any city. But flint and detroit are definitely two cities that I usually dont feel comfortable walking down most streets at night