Sunday, December 07, 2008

Not bankers

Hell, I"m not a banker either, but the thrust of the UAW ad is that if they go under, we all go under.



Horsecrap! There are other plants in the United States that makes cars and they're doing okay. Not great, maybe, but okay. Those two links are representative. Google it yourself.

The thought that if GM, or Ford goes tits-up, we'd lose the ability to make cars. That's nuts. The Big Three ain't the only car manufacturers in town. And they're not to big to fail.

I tell you who ought to fail. The UAW ought to fail. They've done more to drag down the Big Three.... wait a minute, that's not altogether true. Management shares a lot of the blame. Probably all the blame, but part of that is it let the UAW get their foot in the door. Forty, fifty years ago, unions made a lot of sense. Nowadays, not so much. Hell, I was a union member once upon a time, but I've come to look upon them as relics from the past. Like steam locomotives. Fun to watch, but archaic and wasteful.

Collective bargaining. You know, Joseph Stalin had a lot of things called Collectives. Words mean something.

1 comment:

Rivrdog said...

Having looked at this auto-industry bailout for weeks now, I'm convinced that they're going to do it all wrong.

Here in Portland, OR, we've had several dealers go under in the last few weeks (close their doors), and several more re-align. A Lincoln-Mercury dealership just re-aligned with a big Ford dealership, making a very "retro" Ford, Lincoln & Mercury dealership.

I'm convinced that the bailout money needs to go to the dealerhips, to help them carry their inventory longer. The banks force these dealerships out of business because they can't pay the interest on that inventory when they're not selling cars. Many of these same banks are getting bailed out themselves, so why not attach a rider to their bailout money to force them to extend their loans to the dealerships? Then give the banks more money when they show receipts for THAT.

It's a win-win. The dealerships stay open, and as their inventory gets older, the price comes down so more people can afford new cars. Some of that inventory is going to move, albeit slowly, and slowly but surely, Main Street pulls itself out of the recession.