GM

That’s greed. I live in a GM town, have only owned one non GM vehicle. They just made me a ford customer. I hope they feel this.

 

I believe Ford is doing the exact same thing. Toyota for life!

 

Ford didn’t take bailout money. They secured loans and restructured to avoid bankruptcy. The loans kept them competitive and the paid a good majority back by 2009

 

I read they are doing a major restructuring with similar outcomes for workers and communities. Maybe it's hearsay, not sure.

Still - Toyota for life.

 

I can’t drive a Toyota here. We have a ford plant and two GM plants. I’m a contractor so I have to pull into my customers driveways with an American truck if I want to sell the job.

 

As a mechanic, I've opened many a GM hoods only to find Toyota or Isuzu running gear. And I've opened many a Ford hoods only to find Mazda or Nissan running gear. And Chrysler products with Mitsubishi engine and trans. Or discover that I am working on a Nissan simply re badged as a Ford or Toyota re badged as a GM. Marry these to a few European car companies and Americans have no idea what they drive or who they're in bed with.

 

Maybe cars are better produced in different economies? Why does the division of labor on a global scale worry so many? Is building cars all you know or want to do? Protectionism us not the answer

Sent from my SM-G935V using Grasscity Forum mobile app

 

Maybe our available workforce doesn't have the tech skills they need in order to transition into the types of jobs the industry needs them to fill. The world has changed. Automation is taking the place of what manufacturing workers have historically done. People need to keep up or they'll be left behind.

"Five key skills are expected to be needed to succeed in the fourth industrial revolution"

• Technology and computer skills
• Programming skills for robots and automation
• Critical thinking
• Working with tools and techniques
• Digital skills

http://www.themanufacturinginstitut...~/media/E100A553E4884F40B2241C1379C7D6C4.ashx

That's a huge shift from the standard manufacturing worker of yesterday who could barely program the clock on their VCR.

 

I myself look at outsourcing low skilled jobs to second and third world countries as nothing more than the continuation of the division of labor in a evolving economy. As behind as a lot of the older generation like myself is in tech, we are still leaps and bounds ahead of many other countries that can actually benefit from low skilled factory jobs and make a way better living producing cheap stuff. The younger generation in America, they know more by age 13 about the five key skills you listed outside of critical thinking than my generation did after college. As long as our government interferes as little as possible in human action than we will be fine. But that is not a given and our individuality is under attack daily by the collectivist, protectionist, keynesian economist and the democratic socialist types.
Jobs lost to automation is great! Its actually the end game of all sound economics if you think about it. The goal of economics is to produce goods not to make jobs. If machines can do the majority of the labor that humans now do it will free up massive amounts of time, which is the greatest limited recourse we all have. This in turn would naturally lead people to learn about sound money and its real purpose as a medium of exchange for goods and services, and not a tool to enslave whole nations of people who have not even been born yet. Free market money should be competing for more and more goods putting a downward pressure on prices until things that are in great abundance cost only pennies or are free, like air. In turn freeing up labor and human resources to concentrate on the high demand items that are still scarce represented by high prices. Today we have a ever increasing amount of fiat dollars driving up the cost of not only limited goods but all goods to the point where ordinary people cant even afford necessities in a lot of cases. This has given birth to our out of control welfare state and is the umbilical cord to the military industrial complex. The overlords have inflated our currency to the point where the average public school indoctrinated citizen, growing ever more economically ignorant, demands a livable wage. Adding even more money to the economy and inflating prices, people are blind to the hidden tax of inflation the state and bankers use to their benefits that led to the whole thing in the first place. A ever changing fast paced economy is not to be feared, its the people who try to control and plan it out as if they somehow know better are the ones to look out for.

 

The markets are powerful GW eventually they will overcome the social planners, as you know the welfare state gives as much or more to the rich in tax funded subsidies and bailouts. TAXES ARE THEFT.

 

That would be proof that bailing out corporations is unwise. The gov't shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers or propping up failure. We should have learned that lesson from Solyndra.

 

Ever since they got that bail out from the government I’ve never seen so many GMCs on the road. Never owned one myself and never will.
It’s not hard to see who really runs the government/politicians. The banks, big pharma, car manufacturers, Europe, insurance companies, etc.

 

There is around 1 billion people who live on a dollar a day, Im sure 20 dollars a day and a hot meal would be well worth it for them? These people have been in these conditions for the entirety of their countries existence. Capitalism could increase their pay and working conditions by 20x tomorrow and you would say it was a predatory system? Tell me of a system that eliminates greed? The truth is capitalism is the best system we know of to limit people's greed and its effects on a society as a whole. There can not be freedom without freemarkets, period. And capitalism is the closest thing we have to a free market system so far. Democracy is feeding off of capitalism which gives the appearance of a system based off of greed, which just so happens to be what democratically ran states are. Auctions of stolen goods to the voting majority. Nothing legitimizes your own greed more than a couple million people demanding the same as you. The markets, the voices of the public say otherwise and you blame it, not your philosophy? Its really weird to me. The recognition of private property, sound money, the division of labor and the accumulation of capital has led to the greatest growth in the worlds history. The results are not even debatable. The progression of mankind led by the west in the last century is nothing short of amazing. Even crony capitalism out performs every other form of governing the world has to offer, and by a long shot. There is not a single country that generates nearly as much wealth as the united states and shares that wealth world wide. In the form of government to government aid, military aid, humanitarian aid, and all this is out spent by the private sector and its donations to the needy. YUP sounds real fucking greedy. If we constrain our government and divorce ourselves from the evils of democracy we will see even more progression for mankind thanks to free market principles and free exchange.

 

This is why there are lobbyist. It is more cost effective to pay off politicians then it is to compete in the ever changing markets. Monopolies are only maintained by state force. Is your argument that capitalism is not working really going to be a example of state intervention? GM relies on the state to maintain its market share through licensing fees and tariffs on imports. It is bailed out by the state when it goes bankrupt, and it relies on the state to limit the free market forces that would of not allowed it to happen in the first place. And people like you say the free markets don't work and advocate for more government intervention? I don't get it.