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I don't agree with the big 3 auto bailout but I wanted to point something out about Honda/Toyota. Japan has been subsidizing those companies the whole time which has helped their success.
I'm wondering to what extent the subsidizing was done. I haven't seen details about it. The US government does provide money for various research projects to the US companies, over $2 billion so far on various projects like PNGV and Freedomcar.
Yeah this is more of the "I have a fancy degree so I should get paid a lot" mentality.
When I go into an office, I see a lot of paper pushers. I really don't know what they do, I ask and still don't really get it. Does it take that many people to do that? When I go into a factory, a development studio etc....I understand what is going on. Everyone seems to be productive... Just saying...
This is a classic case of somebody being unable to see the forest for the trees.
Production staff don't want to know and don't need to know where they fit into the big picture, just like our muscles don't need to know what the brain is doing....but the brain needs to pay attention to everything in the system to keep things running smoothly.
I think that since Humanoid can't comprehend the brain processes without being able to visually see them explains a great deal about his opinions .
What is the more difficult part of your participation on CD Humanoid?
The thought and previous aquisiton of knowledge going into your opinions and posts, the knowhow to use a computer or the physical act of turning it on and typing?
isn't it ironic that now the union "productivity" has to be supplemented by wages from some of those very same pencil pushers, as well as every other worker? we have to stop this stupid class war business. this is just an issue of greed, as was the wall street bailout, as well as the mortgage bailout to come. people are trying to live at a level that they cannot afford (in the GM case it is not so much wages as it is employee healthcare and retirement benefits) and now they want to blame everybody else. i was offended by the GM union guy stating that it was the south's fault. maybe mr. gettelfinger (or whatever his name is) needs to look in a mirror before throwing stones and learn to live within his own means. some people actually start to cut back when times are tough instead of looking to government "daddy" to save them. as long as they have a union with that lousy attitude about what is owed to them, i hope nobody buys their cars.
I think that since Humanoid can't comprehend the brain processes without being able to visually see them explains a great deal about his opinions .
Eh? I don't recall talking about brain in this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sterlinggirl
Production staff don't want to know and don't need to know where they fit into the big picture, just like our muscles don't need to know what the brain is doing....but the brain needs to pay attention to everything in the system to keep things running smoothly.
Good for the production stuff, but that isn't what I'm talking about. Rather I'm talking about the paper pushers that leech on the productivity of the working class. There are huge corporations that do little more than push papers around, of course many of them are failing now. Creating financial instruments to play hot potato with isn't exactly productive... If its not clear how something supports production, then its more than likely waste in the system.
There is also the issue that American business tends to fill itself with a high degree of waste in the form of paper pushing staff. But that is a different issue entirely.
College is the new vocational school, the office is the new factory and white collar workers are the new working class.
So many people graduate college now (about 25%) that it's almost an average thing to do. Thus the average livings made by many college grads.
What's funny is how many people cry that people today don't value hard work and yet are themselves unwilling to value it in the only way that really counts, you know, being willing to pay for it.
What IrishTom said. College degrees are average nowadays and do not deserve any more compensation than a skilled trade that does not require a degree and is in higher demand. But college graduates fight that economic reality tooth and nail; the overwhelming majority staunchly believe the fact that they possess a piece of paper in it of itself is worth an above median compensation. The irony is that after such "hard work" and time spent pursuing said education, most awfully miss the economic principles under which their compensations materialize. I mean I get it from my own sister, who by virtue of spending her 20s as a professional student and living in the metro DC area feels her education should net her an income that would allow her to live a "certain" way, which for a single individual in that area is roughly 70K starting wage, fat chance sis. She's a "thought worker" looking for the proverbial "analyst" job, and there's more of those people in DC than there are wrench turners in the midwest. Joke's on her, the wrench turners didn't spend eight years floating around campuses. Her hard work, which is real, does not equate to higher compensation, all it creates is an entitlement complex, which is what most white collar workers in this country suffer from. The bitterness behind overextending yourself financially to get a degree that nets you a job that after student loans comes out to a lower middle class living, while completely missing the real reason why they have to work two jobs just like the wrench turner to afford the house in the cul-de-sac, is the source of most white collar's misdirected anger towards unions. And it's not just the analyst, it's the accountant, the engineering, the nurse, the business management major, the liberal art of any flavor graduate, everybody is on the entitlement speech. All you have is the neo-high school diploma. Thank globalization and ever-necessary productivity requirements for that. By legitimizing the process with said attitude you sink yourself deeper in the quick sand. Ship of educated fools.
As to the virtue of said hard work, I've seen it first hand and it's overhyped. College today is an extended high school, it's not even funny. I worked as hard as anybody else to get an aerospace engineering degree, and went to teach at the undergraduate level as a graduate student on the same; believe me parents pay way too much to put their kids (few kids have the credit to qualify for out-of-state tuition in loans) in de facto daycare while the students overwhelmingly live an arrested adolescence in the hope that the morning after commencement they'll wake up to a starting wage 60K lickity split. That's not conjecture, that's the overwhelming environment, and it's clearly substantiated by the attitudes portrayed in this forum from people removed from college 10 years or more. A college degree is the high school diploma of the 21st century and it DOES NOT entitle you to anything, and certainly not a guarantee that you'll make more money than an individual without a college degree. Most college degree holders have an overinflated sense of worth as it pertains to the "inherent value" of their non-physical work, and you'll never be able to convince them of that fact, otherwise they wouldn't have pursued the avenue of educational financial destitution to attain such degree. If degrees were free then this would be a non-issue, but when a college education requires you to effectively mortgage your productive life (25-55) to fully amortize the debt you incurred in attain said education, of course people will fight you tooth and nail to rationalize such nonsensical choice. They need an above median compensation to substantiate a net lifestyle that warrants such sacrifices, and when the economy slaps them back to reality, they become bitter and attack those who they deem unfit and lazy, for having the relative same lifestyle they attained but for a fraction of the cost. Class warfare is not nonsense in america, it's real and it's the fundamental reason why colleges are hyped. To be a college graduate and disavow the existence of class social warfare and dynamics is outright disingenuous and further illustration of the fanatical moral construct under which most white collar workers view their economic worth. Keep dreaming...
I posted this over on the Michigan thread, but thought it might actuly fit better here;
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Something everyone has been overlooking here and elsewhere. How many here for the last 8-10 years have noticed the reduced prices on GM,Ford, Chrysler vehicles on the t.v. ads, newspapers, etc.?
The point is this; They have been taking $7500 to $10,000 and sometimes more off the price to lure in customers. It has been "expected" by consumers to just wait until the next cut throat price slash before buying a vehicle. hmmmm.
I didn't want to post until I found something to back it up. I found that on Nov. 23, in the Fort Worth Star, Ed Walace had interviewed the CEO of GM. Wallace asked RW if they had not been reducing prices to less than cost levels before anyone even went to the dealership, if GM would have been making money like they priced and sold the vehicles 10 years ago? Rick W.'s answer was YES!
It isn't the workers wages, it's not the retirement benefits, it's not even competition from toyoda or other import companies, not taxes, it's the companies pricing their product below their cost for sale. That is why they are in trouble. When you see the t.v. (which by itself cost a million to make) advertising that new car or truck below what the same vehicle cost 10 years ago, you know they are pricing themselves right out of business because there is no way to make money like that!
Humo, I agree. I find this fascinating and distinctly bizarre. What's $15 billion for the auto industry amount to? Not much compared to the lists of zeros on the financial industry bailout numbers.
The hostility in Congress toward core American industry, vs the golden boyz of the fraud & banking industry, is appalling but not surprising.
The elites' contempt for anything not coastal goes back decades. JFK considered Henry Ford a rube and treated the Detroit barons with contempt. Some will argue that the Kennedy arrogance was a major contributor to his getting snuffed, since he also treated LBJ like an office boy and fellow midwest/midsouth rube. Which he was, but it doesn't pay to cross Lyndon too many times.
The Company That Can Do No Wrong, Golddigger Sacks America, is the one that has been engineering the selling off or long-term leasing of core infrastructure like toll roads, lotteries, etc.
The wise and honest men running Chicago recently cashed out their parking meter system for $1 billion in immediate cash for a long term lease by a private corporation.
This is the sort of thinking that got us into this financial mess to begin with, running up the credit card with no way to pay it back.
As one visionary city councilman said, "Where else can you get a wad of $1 billion all at once?"
Does anyone think that money will be spent responsibly?
What will they do in 15--or five--years when they need more money?
But Golddigger Sacks America is making hundreds of millions working the deals to lease out American territory to foreign entities. Who's to say the next step isn't some Spanish militia stopping all vehicles on "their" road to search for "unauthorized" material?
This is probably illegal, it is certainly indecent and ill-advised regarding the maintenance of national sovereignty. But niether party seems interested in core American values like hard work, honesty, saving for the future vs. ringing up the plastic, too much to mention here.
It is a fact that $15 or $50 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to what the feds have illegally and unconstitutionally sent out to God knows who--probably some Chinese banks are involved, they will try to keep this all a secret--and the hippocrites in Congress criticize the auto execs for doing, on a very small scale, what Congress and the sectreas have done on a massive scale.
If American Express can wave a magic wand and become a bank and thus become eligible for free unaccountable untraceable money, the auto companies with their captive finance companies which by the way also grant home mortgages--GMAC, anyone??--are CERTAINLY eligible to wave that same magic wand.
Which is what any of them with ball one should do, despite Congress' criticism of their even speaking of such an unethical act.
IMO that is exactly what the auto industry should do. But the East Coast Mafia that stretches from NYC to DC and is all in bed together, sometimes literally, would be outraged, outraged!! if anyone were to think of such an unethical act.
The problem is not Wall Street, it is not banking, it is the mobsters in Congress and the White House who have already bankrupted the nation and still spend as if their credit cards had no limit and no bill due.
The bill is coming due, however.
Meanwhile, does anyone remember the steel industry?
America needs its core industries, as another poster noted, all foreign industrial powers subsidize their core industries and it is time for the USA to do so in a way that maximizes the capitalist system and minimizes government interference.
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