Don’t you see you’re knocking holes in the ship – that you also sail in?

Anyway, the notion that the UAW has uncompetitive wages is nothing more than one of those Republican farts that passes for insight.

Fact is, auto workers in the industrialized world (all countries much friendlier to the unions than the US of A, you ditto heads!) make more than the UAW.

The difference is not the UAW.

The difference is that the employers in this country pay for benefits, pensions and health care. In other industrialized countries, the govt picks up the tab. It makes it much easier for manufacturing to be competitive in those countries.

Maybe those hordes of unemployed UAW folks will take to the streets and drag the lot of youse out of your cozy kitchens, and into the rough & tough world that you obviously could stand to use a thing or two about. At the point of a pitchfork, I hope not.

Look we all know these companies are bust and need a lot of help to survive. Nobody is being fooled any more. We need to see that there is a sustainable future for them. The way to get there is Ch. 11 reorganization, so that the costs can really be rationalized.

Furthermore, if there is a requirement that GM cannot build normal large cars, I am unlikely to buy from them, because I like to buy large vehicles. A way to make their future even tougher is to cripple them by not allowing them to build what the market wants, while Toyota, Honda etc. have more freedom.

They build good cars now. People are learning that. I love my 2006 Chrysler, and the only reason I won’t buy another soon is that I plan to keep this one a long time. But the financial situation needs to be stabilized, and really stabilized.

No buyers, no GM. Not hard to understand.

Plus the idea you can take out GM and still have an US auto industry is also wrongheaded. GM is a very big customer to a lot of auto parts suppliers. In bankruptcy, they are unsecured creditors, and get nada until the Ch. 11 is final. A lot of them die in this process. The foreign transplants need them too, so they shutter.

Just like finance, more integrated than you think, thanks to these extended supplier nets , and if one big player goes, they all eventually go.

Don’t get too hard on him. He sounds like an Ivy League grad mindlessly sheep bleating the slogans programmed into him at his Maoist indoctrination sessions. Here’s a very good essay on the real Herbert Hoover, the true father of the “New Deal”.

http://www.acting-man.com/2008/12/hoovers-heirs-at-work.html

And for the record, I am not “Acting Man”, who claims to be a hedge fund trader.

http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

…outside the UAW’s reach.

What is that supposed to mean? Herbert Hoover went on a government spending spree. Take a look at the government purchases figures from 1929 – 1931.