OT: GM Layoffs

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a,

to Oshawa.

us knew he was lying, but he fooled enough people for long enough ...

elp

n,

Actually it was G.W. bush who first bailed out GM:

It is true the Democrats proposed a bailout bill that the G.O.P. senate defeated (they said it didn't reduce wages enough), but Bush then unilaterally agreed to lend $17.4 to GM and Chrysler. Obama did support Bush's action.

John

Uh, from your own article...

"After taking office six weeks later, Obama put together an auto task force that extended tens of billions more in emergency financing to Detroit over the ensuing months, and also did what appears to have been a pretty good job in restructuring G.M. and selling Chrysler to Fiat.

Obama deserves a lot of credit for finishing the job that Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, had started."

Yes, Bush started the ball rolling, but Obama had to inject much more money to make it all work.

Odd though how even with the huge loans GM went through bankruptcy and was able to relieve itself of much debt from before. In particular, they were able to dodge responsibility for design problems and other product liability. In one case a GM lawyer refers to the NEW GM and the OLD GM. Moral: Don't buy a pre-2009 GM vehicle.

Oh, so you are saying it is cultural?

How would you feel if others made efforts to have church bells quieted under noise control ordinances?

BTW, many churches (if not the vast majority) don't keep time with their bells. They use them to announce services and occasionally important public events. Frederick is known by its "clustered spires", but I don't think I hear any church bell other than on Sunday. Not sure about the Catholic church, they may ring for services every day. We have a carillon in the park that does the hour thing (maybe quarter hour, it's been awhile since I was there to hear it).

I would summarize the mentality of the Conservative base to be that somehow, the United States owes them something for the happy accident of being born white and here.

For my part I definitely don't recall signing any such contract.

"Bootstrap theory" for everyone else seems to often come with the expectation of privileged treatment for oneself. Get real.

The Model S and Model X were essentially "cost no object" supercar projects. The drivetrain itself is not particularly sophisticated: you take a giant honking expensive lithium ion battery and a giant honking expensive drive motor and shove it in the chassis. There ya go. Electric supercar.

By comparison the Voltec drive system as used in the Volt is extremely complicated. It has multiple motors of different sizes, one motor can also act as as a generator to drive the other, planetary gears, multiple clutches, about 12 different computer-controlled operating modes, etc.

It has to have all that gadgetry to hit the required target range numbers off of what is finally a fairly small battery pack and a fairly small 1.5L modified Chevy Cruze engine, of the size that is affordable from a manufacturing perspective to put in a car with a base MSRP of well under half that of a base Model S.

I don't think the drivetrain of the Model S can be a direct port to the Model 3 as that's where much of the huge cost lies. There were and are probably a lot of difficult design choices to make.

For example I don't know how either the Bolt or Model 3 handle the cold weather issue. The Tesla Model S doesn't do too bad as it has a liquid cooling system where waste heat from the drive motor is transferred to the battery. That likely works fine because the Tesla has a huge honking drive motor that probably generates a good lot of it. The Volt handles it in a similar fashion except the engine turns on occasionally during very cold weather to keep the battery warm, but the fuel amount used to do it is pretty small and you win out overall.

All I can say is... proof of the pudding will be in the eating...

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r.

to

ed

My point was that it wasn't the Democrats who started the process as the

previous poster claimed - that was all.

The bailout was initiated by Bush, and it was expanded by Obama. No argument there I don't know enough economics to have a valid opinion, just a hunch, that between them Bush and Obama stopped the pending depression in 2008.

Do you REMEMBER what it was like in late 2008???

John

Ok, I see what you mean. Yes, I remember as well as I remember anything. I was working for myself and was busy on a new contract, so my immediate concerns were not the same as many others.

I remember being resentful they didn't do more to hold the banks accountable. I don't know that they could have let them fail any more than they could let the auto makers fail. But they could have required them to split up into smaller entities, perhaps geographic or perhaps functionally split. But the world was panicking. I seem to recall Bush wanted to let the banks sort it out on their own, but he was told if he did that the entire economy was at peril. Sort of a domino effect... the southeast Asia of economics. Who can say for sure. I know the banks took full advantage of it and ended up making good money very quickly. Without huge infrastructure and labor costs, it is easy to make lots of money in banking when conditions are right. Automakers aren't so lucky, they need a good healthy upswing to make real money.

I can't criticize Bush's handling of this. I expect anyone in office at that point would have been a bit in shock at the enormity of the problem. He and Congress took a first pass at it (Congress somewhat reluctantly it seems) and later once Obama had a bit more perspective he upped the ante which seemed to seal the gap in the dam.

I really didn't have much exposure as I had two houses which were bought in the 80's, so had lots of equity even after the bust. I had some cash and a contract for a year or so. Anyway, it is mostly behind us although some love to point fingers and blame anything and everything on their least favorite politician. I think the economy is doing well now. I want to buy a new car, but it's a bit too early to buy an all electric one. So the economy will have to be happy with my money staying in my checking account.

lol, nobody would've even heard of Trump without hundreds of millions of kickbacks, tax breaks, and bailouts on poor investments. plus the hundreds of millions he inherited from his father's business building low income housing projects. at taxpayer expense.

It's a strange mentality to feel that while cleverly dodging and hustling around the obligations everyone else has is something admirable, and only getting cut checks directly from the Treasury department is stealing.

At the end of the day, direct government subsidies feels a lot more honest.

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la,

to Oshawa.

f us knew he was lying, but he fooled enough people for long enough ...

help

to

on,

who haven't been all that careful about the people they'd had running the c ompany, didn't do as well out of the rescue as James Arthur thought that th ey should have done.

Getting a lower tax rate on your productive activity and getting a credit for the same dollar amount--against taxes you already owe--in return for engaging in a politically-preferred activity, may seem confusingly similar (and probably intentionally so), but the effects are utterly different.

One unburdens productive activity. The other subsidizes fashionable cars for society's wealthiest, at blue-collar workers' expense.

Cheers, James Arthur

Yep. There were dozens of domestic car-making operations that would have loved to increase production and sell more cars (that people actually wanted) for a better price.

Fortunately, by ample application of everyone's money, we avoided that nightmare scenario, and saved the high-cost producer with the unpopular products.

Cheers, James Arthur

at

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the

are

bankrupt and out of business, the other car companies would have taken up the slack, hired more people , and sold more cars.

Sure. 1930 all over again. But James Arthur and Dan are sure that this time , it would all have been different.

In reality, the car-making operations that would have done well out of anot her collapse of a US car-maker would have been in Japan, Korea and Germany (except that the German ones are all over Europe). James Arthur's low cost domestic US car-makers exist only in his fertile and well-indoctrinated ima gination.

If they were real he would have listed them, or at least a few of them.

Bullshit.

To a communist, it probably does feel honest.

From another communist.

I'm certainly not one of societies wealthiest, and while it's true you can go out and buy a $100k Model X and feel "green", if that's what you want to do, the overwhelming number of electric vehicles sold are not luxury vehicles.

The reason most people drive cars like the Volt, Leaf, Prius, Ford C-Max, etc. is that it makes economic sense to do so - if you drive them "right" and drive say 1000 miles a month your "fuel" costs immediately drop from about $130/mo in a vehicle of equivalent size and cost to around $10 a month.

The public charging stations I use around here are, for the most part, paid for by businesses who provide it as a value-added service to encourage people to shop at their establishment. And it works - that's usually where I go. Unburdening me from the expense of absurd gas prices, much of the profits of which go into the pockets of countries in problematic areas, has certainly freed _me_ up to engage in more productive economic activity.

Meanwhile, I talked with one woman whom I know to be on public assistance and yet also brags about what low mileage her huge truck gets. "I love my truck though, I would never give it up."

A sensible person would drive that old truck right to the scrapyard, and lease something that taxpayers didn't have to comp the fuel costs on.

Also I would consider the unrestricted yanking of fossil fuels out of the ground to be just as much a destructive activity as it is a productive activity.

In the 21st century though it's finally pointless to have economic arguments with people who reject climate change science, as any strategy other than "let industry just do whatever it wants" is thought of onerous and foolish.

I admit, in a world with essentially unlimited resources, unlimited growth potential, and where human activity had no destabilizing impact on the climate whatsoever any other strategy kinda would be. I don't think that's the world we live in, though.

e:

other collapse of a US car-maker would have been in Japan, Korea and German y (except that the German ones are all over Europe). James Arthur's low cos t domestic US car-makers exist only in his fertile and well-indoctrinated i magination.

Or maybe the problem is your infertile imagination and intellectual sloth?

Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, ... e.g.,

And of course, Ford.

Cheers, James Arthur