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akuma587 on 24 November 2008
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Kasz216 said:
akuma587 said:
The Big Three Bailout is separate. It would only be around $25 billion (although most anyone who knows what is going on know that it would end up being more than that).

I'm torn on the Big Three Bailout. If there was one, it would have to be extreme in its criteria. I mean to the point where the entire board of directors is kicked out and there have to be many tangible steps taken to show that the car companies are going to change.

But I have recently been convinced that Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a better option. This is because Chapter 11 would allow the car manufacturers to negate a lot of the current obligations they have.

Part of the car manufacturers problems is that their cost structure makes them uncompetitive. Toyota, for example, has a fraction of the number of dealerships that GM has, while both have about the same market share. This is because local car dealers have petitioned to their states to get legislation favorable to enforcing restrictive contracts where dealerships only sell certain types of cars. This has ballooned costs across the board.

Another problem is the labor contracts GM and the rest of the Big Three have. These have just gotten completely out of control, with the car companies promising pensions they could never fulfill. I am for equitable treatment of labor, but it just isn't working with GM. They are also paying more than is competitive to their laborers. I may be pretty liberal, but I do know my economics.

So all in all I am against a bailout for the Big Three, as a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing would solve more of their problems and the taxpayers shouldn't be responsible for the car manufacturers' poor choices.

Dude try working one of those jobs and tell me that.

They're outright horrible.  You wake up every day dreading going in, but knowing you can't quit because you aren't going to get a workable wage otherwise.  You dream of fucking quiting a job there.

It's outright horrible.  Those people really don't get overpaid.  They get paid just enough to stop themselves from blowing their brains out or quitting.

The real problem is that.

A) We don't have universal healthcare.  So anyone who gives good healthcare to their workers is at a huge disadvatnage vs countries with universal healthcare or countries where people don't expect healthcare

B) Everyone bought into SUVs, cause that's what America wanted till oil got all fucked up.

Absolutely, but a bailout wouldn't solve either one of these problems, and neither would going into Chapter 11.  GM and the other two need to get their heads out of their ass and have a more diversified business model.

Universal healthcare would really help a lot of employers (if implemented correctly) as it would shift a lot of burden away from them in having to ever offer healthcare to their employers.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson