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The Japanese came in here and destroyed our electronics industry then the Koreans behind them. No more magnavox no more zenith no more RCA. It was all Sony toshiba pioneer. Now it's Samsung and lg. they protect their home markets. An American firm can't go over there and build a plant and start pumping out goods and their population is very homerish anyway.
But not Americans. We're smart. We hate our fellow factory workers and want them all out of work because that's better for the country. They should have just built better products at half the cost. It's their fault.
And yet, while they build their products, they're buying chips from Qualcomm and NVIDIA to slap into said goods.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewHavensFinest
If I was the head of GM, I would stop producing so many cars that people arent buying. Stop saying weve finally caught up with the world..... Is it really that hard for us to make a GOOD car.
Why cant Chevy buy some diesel engines from VW or something and start using them for their Impala or something?
theres nothing wrong with it..
Look at the past, the Ford SHO used a V6 from Yamaha, and it was better than the newer bigger V8 that Ford used later.
Maybe Im crazy..
GM might have learned all of these lessons, if it wasn't for the fact that they have enough lobbyists to insure that they never have to learn what customers actually want.
I really don't have any strong feelings - neither loyalty nor hatred, towards American automakers or Japanese automakers. I buy the best I can get for my money. If it's American, then fine. If it's Japanese then that's fine too. If Detroit wants my cash then they should just start producing better automobiles.
It's just that simple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishtom29
What's so wrong about a fella having a nice paycheck? Why are you so hostile to the notion? Envy?
Nothing wrong with having a nice paycheck -so long as you don't have to screw me over to get it. I (along with other family members) have been screwed over by poor GM quality in the past but have had great Nissans. What's so wrong with a person wanting a reliable automobile at a decent price?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishtom29
Odd how so many Americans claim to love their country yet hold their fellow countrymen in contempt.
I really don't care about any of that. It's not that I hate the autoworkers - it's that I don't like the ****ty cars that come out of Detroit.
I don't see any connection between GM's army of lobbyists and their inability to make cars that people want; the fact that the factories which make the Malibu and LaCrosse have been shut down multiple times since December 1st due to bloated inventories of both cars (translation---they're not selling) while Passats, Camrys, Accords, Altimas (best-selling car in the USA last month, edging the Camry by 100 units), Fusions & Sonatas continue to sell like hotcakes in this white hot automobile sales market is an unqualified indictment of General Motors, and nothing more.
If you want to blame anybody for the dreadful sales figures for the Malibu & LaCrosse as compared to their competitors, blame their R&D department, and their engineering staff; lobbyists cannot overcome creating a dreadful product which the buying public has summarily rejected, spending billions of $$$ in advertising in (hopefully) suckering folks into buying them, and then resorting to either nosebleed-inducting incentives or dumping them into rental car lots, and demolishing their resale value in the process.
American-nameplate cars have improved considerably in recent years, to the credit of American innovation and engineering. However, American manufacturing, in the sense of basically manual assembly-line work for a “middle class” wage, is doomed. This is true for cars, clothes, electronics and everything else that isn’t export-controlled (such as defense/aerospace).
It does however bother me why people don’t realize that a Honda made right here in Ohio supports more American jobs than a Camaro made in Canada.
As for technology supplanting human-labor (with robots and computers) and therefore being able to produce more goods with a smaller workforce… well, that’s true, and likely accounts for much of the rebound in the manufacturing sector of the US economy without commensurate rebound in the number of filled manufacturing jobs. However, that doesn’t account for why most consumer goods are made in low-wage nations (Pacific Rim, Latin America,…). If Apple could make their I-phones with 50 CNC programmers instead of 5000 low-wage laborers in China, they’d shift manufacturing back to the US.
But back to the start of this thread… while cars elicit patriotic fervor but shoes and stereos do not. This s because cars are a uniquely expressive statement of a person’s values and persona. They’re a romantic infatuation. They’re overtly visible and are a storied extension of ourselves. Even a high-end stereo is a gadget, while a car is something deeply emotional. Therefore, we’re going to expend more of our emotional capital – as consumers and citizens – on cars.
And BTW the highest-end stereos (as with highest-end of many products) are still made in the US. If you’re willing to drop $20,000 on an amplifier, chances are that it was made in America, using American capacitors and resistors and vacuum tubes (notice that I didn’t say transistors!).
I don't get why people celebrate the fact that Americans don't build anything any more and that practically everything we use comes from china. Even so called Japanese goods are made in china now.
The US is still either the largest, or second largest manufacture in the world, believe it or not. Its just that a lot of the products we make and sell are sort of 'invisible' to the average consumer. So while we might make far fewer blenders and TV sets, we do make an awful lot of planes, jet engines, medical equipment, microchips, commercial diesel engines and construction equipment, trains, and so on. All things the consumer can't pick up on the shelf at whatever big box store.
The other thing is that it wasn't foreign competition that contributed to the decline in factory jobs. It was automation. Ever watched the TV show " How its made"? There are some products featured on that show where it appears that the entire product is made by robots and machines. With the advent of CNC machining and now 3D printing its possible for a computer hooked up to a machine to make a highly sophisticated parts from a chunk of raw steel, aluminum, or plastic.
A good example of this is the aforementioned electronics industry. As I previously mentioned I collect vintage electronics ( radios and TV sets). The sets from the 20's-50's are made with a metal chassis with individually wired components ( capacitors, resistors, coils, transformers, tubes, etc.) Someone had to sit there with a soldering iron in hand and physically hand-wire EVERYTHING in that set. Can you imagine how many workers that took? How much would something like that cost now? I recall someone else mentioned high end American made amplifiers and their cost. They are pricey because, well for one thing they are nice pieces but also because they are made by hand. Nowadays a typical TV set or radio has a PCB board that has all of the components "printed" on the circuit, or a robot literally sticks the pieces together. So in other words, where 100 people might have been required to make a radio, now maybe only a handful are needed. Put that into consideration amongst all of the jobs that used to exist in manufacturing and now are gone due to automation and there you have it.
The other thing is that it wasn't foreign competition that contributed to the decline in factory jobs. It was automation. Ever watched the TV show " How its made"? There are some products featured on that show where it appears that the entire product is made by robots and machines. With the advent of CNC machining and now 3D printing its possible for a computer hooked up to a machine to make a highly sophisticated parts from a chunk of raw steel, aluminum, or plastic.
And yet, while they build their products, they're buying chips from Qualcomm and NVIDIA to slap into said goods.
GM might have learned all of these lessons, if it wasn't for the fact that they have enough lobbyists to insure that they never have to learn what customers actually want.
Well there's the answer to the recession. Everybody that's out of work should just get into computer chip manufacturing. Simple and done.
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