They’ve been living on borrowed time for almost 40 years, since they tried to sell crap back then, and the Japanese almost put them out of business.

But instead of using that time to make a better and more fuel efficient product, they went for the quick buck.

And the parasitic UAW has known it was killing its hosts for years. They didn’t care.

But now, we are supposed to ante up and bail them out?

Feh.

But when gas prices hit $4/gallon the automakers were left holding gas guzzlers while the American market disappeared.

My point all along has been that there is plenty of share in the responsibility for this failure… not just the UAW and not just the automakers.

(As a side note, until September, I drove a big red ’98 Mercury Grand Marquis. The best car I’ve ever owned. I bought it brand new and until this summer, never had a moment of trouble with it. I got over 21mpg with that monster car. I’ve always owned a Ford and I’ve always been happy with them. Now I’m driving a ’09 Focus and getting over 10mpg more than with the Merc. I love my new car!)

Excellent point!

A decade ago, my dad got $18K from Uncle Sam for NOT growing peanuts. The raising of “Virginia peanuts” was given, that year, to the Chinese, and VA farmers were paid about three times what they’d have expected to make in a good year for doing NOTHING.

That is when I realized that the world is mad.

Now that my dad has passed on and the administration of the family farm has passed to me (someone else does the farming for us), I am constantly amazed at the crap the USDA sends me; don’t get me started on tobacco allotments and peanuts and cotton….

For thousands of years, humans have tilled the ground, sown seed, and prayed for God to bring a bountiful harvest. Nowadays, you just send forms to Washington and hope to make enough money to cover the taxes on the land.

I think most Americans will see $31/hour for no work for the lunacy it is.

And I’m not solely blaming the Unions. But it seems to me that if job security and job benefits are the mandate of the unions, they carry a fair share of the failures to their workers. It also seems to me that if the Big 3 fail, the Unions have helped bargain their members right out of jobs.

(Auto workers making $75/hour compared to $45/hour at a Toyota plant? What better PR is that for Toyota? Because most Americans aren’t going to look at the fact that Japan subsidizes Toyota. They are looking at that hourly wage difference.)

Obviously, you know more about this subject than I do. I know about as much as the average American knows and I think I’m reacting to this like the average American will.

But I will continue to read about it and learn more.

They could be more proactive with it though. GM’s job bank is setup so that EE’s have to come to a hall and sit around. Ford’s is set up so that EE’s sit at home and show up to claim their checks. Ford’s is actually a better system because people can do job training and look for alternatives during the day.

They could both work on reconfiguring it so that EE’s laid off could find temp work to suppliment the income without the dollar for dollar loss in benefits they currently get.

If they really wanted a fix, they could do some enhanced job training and get people new skills during their job bank time. They’d be amazed how many people left the Bank early and got new jobs without being forced out.

Regarding the bailout. They shouldn’t get it. If they go to bankruptcy court they’ll work it out like they should. It’d be nuts to shortchange that process and remove the moral hazard from business.

There are so many angles to approach with this jobs bank story, that I have no idea where to begin.

There is so much wrong on so many levels in this whole thing… it makes my head hurt.

“They might as well just give us a basket-weaving class, set us in the corner and let us feed the pigeons,” Cisco said.

How about this? How about YOU find a purpose and a new job and stop expecting the UAW and the auto makers to do it for you?

What a novel concept… taking responsiblity for yourself.

I oppose the bail out because money alone will not fix a systemic problem in labor costs for the big three, not as long as UAW contracts bankrupt the companies. A trip to Chapter 11 will wipe out these contracts, and will allow the Big 3 to have the same labor rates that Honda, Toyota, and any other number of non UAW plants who produce great cars in the US with US workers making a good but not insane salary.

Absolutely correct. Its bad enough that the UAW is bankrupting the stockholders of the big three, but to extend that to taxpayers is a travesty.

The auto bailout will save nobody’s jobs, all it will do is socialize another industry and make our overall economy weaker. It’s will cement in cost structures that have driven the auto makers to bankruptcy. it is an example of Gresham’s law, good money after bad.

The auto makers need to seriously change the financial structure of how they build cars. They simply cannot afford the absurd $70/hr cost structure of labor, more than half of it benefits, much of that tied to healthcare retirement.

Socialism feeds failure and starves success.
Capitalism feeds success and starves failure.
Which is a better model for economic growth?

These bailouts are feeding failure and will make us economically weaker and poorer.

We have to do the principled thing and oppose the bailouts.

I think opposing the bail-out of the Big Three is critical, but will the R’s left in Congress fumble the ball?

If the R’s are seen as being against it just to spite Obama, that’s bad, but if it’s a principled and well explained rational stance, then it cam be a good thing.

I oppose the bail out because money alone will not fix a systemic problem in labor costs for the big three, not as long as UAW contracts bankrupt the companies. A trip to Chapter 11 will wipe out these contracts, and will allow the Big 3 to have the same labor rates that Honda, Toyota, and any other number of non UAW plants who produce great cars in the US with US workers making a good but not insane salary.