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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Look at GM. The company is close to going out of business. How would you fix it? How would you compete against Toyota? You would cut costs, and improve productivity, you would fire people who hindered the company's ability to compete. GM was not responsive and now the entire company is at risk, the lives of millions of people at risk, because they did not get the job done. Only the strong survive in business.
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Actually, GM has exported thousands and thousands of American jobs to Mexican plants, where the average wage is about 2 dollars an hour, compared with about ~20/hour per plant worker in detroit.
In between 1994 and 1998 when GM went from making all of their Suburbans in the US to about 84,000 in the US and 82,500 in Mexico, the average price of a Suburban increased from 24,500-27,00 to 29,000-34,000 dollars. Considering half of those Suburbans came at a labor cost 1/10th what the workers in Detroit got, shouldn't GM have saved a shit load of money? If Detroit labor costs are 1W (100% Wage = 20$/hour), then 82,500 x .10W = 8,250 . This means that GM can make 82,500 cars for the same LABOR PRICE (this is not overall price in parts of course) that would only build them 8,250 Suburbans in Detroit. So why did the costs go up SO much? Because it went into the pockets of the top 5% of management of the company.
Don't even get me started on the reason GM is doing badly--the fact that they got their ASSES handed to them by the fucking Japanese. Dude how many civics and camrys and accords do you see on the road? Lexus, Acura, and BMW have the top 5 selling luxury sedans in the US. No US company is in there anywhere.
Why?? Business is hard, you're right. It's hard to sell shitty cars when there are much better ones on the market. The only thing GM and Ford have going for them are the pick up and SUV markets. The daily commuter, or person earning 25-40g / year is going to buy a foreign car because they are higher quality. Nicer interiors, more options, better warranties, and they DONT BREAK AS MUCH.
You can buy a honda at 100k miles and rest assured that with oil changes, it will go past 200. My 95 Nissan Maxima GLE has 180k + on it and besides regular maintenance, has a perfectly good engine which is not going to die any time soon.
How do you explain that? GM on the verge of bankruptcy, raising prices of their cars even though their costs are dropping? The fact of the matter is that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing because of exploitative labor practices. Can't fuck over your workers? Go some place that can. Oh, and by the way we don't want to pay import / export taxes or be penalized in any way for this (HELLO!!!: NAFTA ANYBODY??)...so yeah..dub ya, you make that happen, we'll see you at the driving range tomorrow.
It's like those who know don't care, and those who don't know don't want to.