Okay, you tell me what you think.
I keep hearing that it is the incompetent CEO's that are to blame...there is truth to that, but if you look at the top ten cars bought in America the "big three" own a majority of the top ten.
How on earth can you completely ignore their other costs...the costs that the foreign companies do not incur.
BOTH need to be looked at.
I don't how just giving a company money, when we know that they lose money on every car they sell is a wise choice.
The other problem is that I don't think it is fair to take away some one's pension. You promised it to them, and you can not take it away. Now, I can see some percentage cut, but then what is the percentage?
I guess I would sell it like this: Workers either take a 15% decrease in pay or a 100% decrease...retired workers take a 25 or 30% cut in benefits or 100%.
I think the numbers can be worked with, but if you do not even LOOK at that, there is NO WAY you can solve the problem.
Because like I said, you can't make money when you lose money on every car you make right off the assembly line.
Monday, November 24, 2008
What do we do about the car industry?
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3 comments:
First off, there will be no "100%" reduction in pensions--there's a FedGov program which will (likely) pay 40% of it.
The auto companies are grossly over-staffed with white-collar AND blue-collar people; that's why product innovation does not move quickly.
You may recall that Lee Iacocca made precisely that point when he ran Chrysler--and he actually did something about it there; Chrysler spent bazillions on what is now the premier design/development/manufacture software package in the world. McDonnell-Douglas was their partner in that venture. But when Iacocca retired, the system was there--but run by timid, ineffective managers.
The culture of "Big3" will not allow substantial changes of any sort. Better to nuke 'em and let actual entrepreneurs pick up the pieces, which they WILL DO, to the benefit of everyone, including consumers and taxpayers.
Nationalize them and give them the mandate of building vehicles that run on something other than petrofuels. Something like Fred Flintstone used to get around Bedrock.
As for the promises made to earlier generations of employees, conservatives generally do not have a problem with pulling the carpet out from under socialized union-types so we'll let dad28 and his ilk sort that out.
The parasite is killing the host but the host has neglected to deal with the problem. So a Govt bailout will only put the host on life support until the money runs out.
Either the parasite and the host start working together for a solution or "the rug gets pulled" since you can't manufacture a product for a loss.
If the govt does send money I'd like to see it go to laid-off employee assistance while the players in the industry reorganize on their own dime.
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