Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

rogermexico sez:

That potentially leaves a lot of empty factories, which the UAW ain't having. Hence the stalemate of the past 20 years. This nut's going to be very hard to crack, cash isn't going to fix it, and the UAW has shown no sign of willingness to make the concessions that the US industry's long-term health would require (I'm not certain it should - that question is VERY complicated and I just haven't thought it through clearly enough to take a position.)

this seems like an important point -- what should the uaw do? the sorkin dealbook column dandy don linked above echoes the prevailing punditocracy cry for blood from the uaw. but it's a hell of a thing to hang the future of the industry not to say the u.s. economy on union workers being willing to just take a big fuck-you. of course there are going to have to be concessions, restructuring and, basically, big job cuts. but what really angers a lot of people about the uaw is that they're in a position to resist any of that. the people calling for Bankruptcy Now! are mostly fantasizing about being able to finally stick it to the unions: $10 an hour, take it or leave it suckers. i'm tired of reading about "gold-plated benefits" as if decent health care and retirement benefits were some kind of crazy level of excess.

it seems to me that what a well-structured "bailout" (or assisted bankruptcy, if that's what happens) would do would be, first of all, to provide some breathing room and some leverage so that as those decisions about empty factories get made, everybody affected is as protected as possible; and then after that of course all the incentives for restructuring the industry along less stupid lines.

d-mouth claims seuss as an alum and he didn't graduate

in case anyone cares

mitt romney, being persuasive.

if a bailout's such a bad idea, why are so many horrible people against it?

Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars.

Give the devil his due: Romney is OTM about this.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

This, however, is a bad joke. As Chryslerberus has already amply demonstrated. (And as GM demonstrated before that during the Zarella "brand management" years.) It's easy to look excellent in e.g. labor relations when you aren't working with existing contracts that were set in cement back when the world was your industry's oyster.

the real problem here is that toyota gets to operate factories in the south w/out having to deal with unions right??

if a bailout's such a bad idea, why are so many horrible people against it?

I already answered this question, and if you don't know, you don't know.

there are some HARD CORE absolute fucking history what's that morons on this thread I started and I am about to have a break down

for the record: drunk ass tombot still makes more sense than uh some people like that knoxville guy with kids

fight me now oof ow ok fight me tomorrow you're still a pussy

standing up sucks

haha. just cuz yr drunk doesn't make u rite.

cheering on the relentless forces of history like you actually know for sure what's going to happen next april doesn't prove anything. the question isn't whether there's a shakeout/restructuring/whatever form it takes in the works, question is how do you minimize the short-term damage, spread the pain, make things not-worst-case-scenario. government can/does have a role in this. government helped set it all up in the first place. it's silly to just pretend there's some platonic ideal here where everybody can stand back and just let "the inevitable" happen. however morally satisfying it might be on some level, the splatter patterns on the pavement aren't going to be all that aesthetically pleasing.

nothing is "inevitable." there are choices to be made.

(and anything mitt romney's cheerleading for, i'm against on basic fucking principle.)

Does Mitt still strap the family mutt to the car roof?

how do you minimize the short-term damage, spread the pain, make things not-worst-case-scenAAAAARGHHH.

no. the question is how do you give the next generation a foundation that isn't built on manure. Right now, I would gladly fuck over millions of american workers if it meant that their children, your children, and my prospective offspring would grow up understanding the difference between operating a sustainable, well-run enterprise versus a huge batch of cloudy incompetence masquerading as industry.

It's more than a little bit pathetic that so-self-identified-progressives are cheerleading the resurrection of a business model that belongs to their grandparents' generation, made possible by fascist delusions of grandeur

nobody that i know of is defending the performance of the american auto industry. but speaking of history, the real reason this matters is because of what the auto industry labor model represents in the u.s. -- which is, basically, the post-wwii social contract in america. living wages, social mobility and health care in exchange for broadly liberal economics (including no socialized medicine). of course that model's been on the fritz for decades, in the auto industry and elsewhere, but it has iconic value. it's been eroded, but not actually replaced by anything. what's going on here is a proxy fight over what happens next. since we have a liberal democratic president and congress coming in, it's easy maybe to think, ok, what comes next will be a modified and broadened social contract, a stronger safety net, all that. which is possible. but look at the model mccain laid out in the campaign. it was the most naked republican statement yet of social-contract-trashing, and just because it lost doesn't mean it won't come back and win in a few years. until further notice, i'm assuming it's the agenda of the minority party. that's why romney, bush et al have no interest in trying to sustain the ailing detroit model -- not because they want to replace it with something better, but because they don't want to replace it, period. no social contract, no unions, no health care, no nothing. they don't want g.m. to reinvent itself if it's still going to have the uaw in tow.

fwiw, i don't personally think the american auto industry is going to disappear in the next two months. i think even if nothing happens now, obama will still have the opportunity to deal with the issue as he wants to. and the auto execs are basically taking advantage of the current political situation to try to squeeze some cash out now while the power structure is bifurcated and it might come with fewer strings attached. all that seems likely. but the basic fight that's being engaged over whether to "help" detroit or "let it die" is not really about the auto industry at all, it's an early round in a much bigger fight about how we're going to structure our economy. and on that count, i don't at all trust romney, bush or mccain to be on anything within catapult distance of the right side. so if they see a g.m. bankruptcy as a step toward their fuck-you vision of the future -- and i think they do -- then i think, maybe it's not something to go rushing into.

nothing is "inevitable." there are choices to be made.

many recently discovered fossil records support this argument.

and "iconic value" is post facto, in all cases

I don't give a FUCK what some GOP shit wants, and I don't give a FLYING FUCK what some donkey party shit wants - I would like to see our fucking government STEP ASIDE for a NEW YORK FUCKING MINUTE, for once in my lifetime, and let american entrepreneurship take its fucking course. You may have heard of this INTERNET COMPANY, it is called GOOGLE, and some other COMPUTER COMPANIES, they go by APPLE and MICROSOFT, they kind of RUN THE WORLD, and that would be because our government was so fucking behind the times that they had no fucking idea how to shit on them while they were creating the future*. So can we PLEASE, PLEASE, shut up about the role of the united states government in our economy with regards to antiquated bullshit

* we live in the future. how's your future? mine's ok. I got a job still.

point being those poor stupid bastards in wherever are going to get screwed one way or another and somebody else can start the fucking charity for their children. meanwhile I'd like to see the next generation employed in concerns that have at least a snowballs's chance in hell of being competitive against the rest of the goddamned globe.

What kind of sucker plans his financial future around betting on corporations, unions, and the government to take care of him in the end anyway?

some of us are suckers, the rest are just drunks

this INTERNET COMPANY, it is called GOOGLE, and some other COMPUTER COMPANIES, they go by APPLE and MICROSOFT, they kind of RUN THE WORLD, and that would be because our government was so fucking behind the times

uh except for the fact that without the u.s. government passing a little something called the high performance computing and communication act of 1991 which led to tiny little things like ncsa mosaic and vastly accelerating broadband penetration, google would be an archive of gopher sites

jezus TOMBOT did you booze all night? I quit at midnight.

that's why romney, bush et al have no interest in trying to sustain the ailing detroit model -- not because they want to replace it with something better, but because they don't want to replace it, period. no social contract, no unions, no health care, no nothing. they don't want g.m. to reinvent itself if it's still going to have the uaw in tow.

This is a dodge. There's no evidence that sustaining the ailing model will do anything but waste money. There's a large amount of evidence that this ailing model--one that has ailed for decades--is unfixable. "Social contract"? What exactly is that? The federal government owes us a "social contract"?

The fact that the UAW is in tow with a collapsed industry is mere icing on the cake for the GOP and the Grover Norquists of the world. The facts are that massive government intervention isn't going to radically revitalize the American auto industry. The facts are that nothing can do that.

hay whoa dandy dons got the facts everyone step back

And if the Dems wanna truly help the UAW, they can troll around billions of dollars in aid to people who lose their jobs. The UAW is going to fail with the American auto industry, and it's time for progressives to actually think progressively on the end game here.

let american entrepreneurship take its fucking course.

as if "american entrepreneurship" exists in some separate realm from "government influence." corporations are chartered by the government, and major industries -- especially the auto industry -- operate within the context of american industrial policy. when auto companies were successful, it was always with government assistance of one kind or another. (killing mass transportation, subsidizing an auto-dependent lifestyle, ensuring abundant supplies of cheap fuel, etc.) after wwii, the government essentially subcontracted chunks of the social contract to the private sector. it was always a dubious bargain, but now it's pretty much nonfunctional. (that's what we're at the "end game" of.) the right-wing position is pretty clear: like dandy don says, what fucking social contract? nobody on the left, or at least nobody in the political mainstream, is fantasizing about 'uaw contracts for all!' the question is how the terms are redefined, who gets to be at the table, and what drives the debate.

the bridge loans detroit wants are a short-term patch, no matter what they accomplish or don't. that's really all this skirmish is about, trying to set the table for the fights that are going to come over how to expand/broaden the safety net (for the glorious FUTURE, which is going to require safety nets you bet) and restructure the expectations of the employer-employee relationship, and employer-government relationship. republicans would prefer that debate to happen in the context of a bankrupt g.m. and eviscerated uaw. democrats (at least some of them) would prefer it not.

I would gladly fuck over millions of american workers if it meant that their children, your children, and my prospective offspring would grow up understanding the difference between operating a sustainable, well-run enterprise versus a huge batch of cloudy incompetence masquerading as industry.

sending these children into poverty doesn't seem like such a good idea to "make a point"

Oh no it totally is.

All must be reminded of the laws of the jungle.

Well, not all.

Just enough to know their place.

> profit sharing or stock grants to all employees

Holy shit, did Mitt Romney just endorse the proletariat owning the means of production?

In context, it looks like he may be endorsing it in exchange for more traditional benefits. (I'm thinking of my dad's company offering decent pension plans to employees when he was hired 20 years ago, and giving stock options to its new employees instead.)

Fuck this guy:

http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/michigan-congressman-taxpayer-money-isn-t-really-their-money-video-

Here's an idea, lend me the $25bn, let me by the volt from chevvy, the Aptera from Google.org and I'll build an american car company that is actually worth something.

Seriously though. Rather than propping up these ageing Behemoths put $25bn into providing cheap capital for people trying to set up engineering businesses to make use of the vast banks of skills in Ohio and Michigan and all the other affected states. Let's have these skilled people build the renewable power infrastructure and sustainable transport infrastructure that the World needs rather than SUVs that no one wants.

Dude didn't you hear Bush's 2001 State of the Union, it's hydrogen cars for everyone

Ed, good luck with that. See: Tesla Motors. Their best shot is to license their technology to a major player. Without massive economies of scale, purchasing leverage, and platform sharing, your company that's actually worth something couldn't bring a Honda Civic to market for under $50K sticker. At which price the American consumer would promptly throw up all over it even if you could steal 40 years of brand equity and call it a Honda Civic. Sorry.

Tracer, I hope to god Bush is right. Especially in growing auto markets where the petroleum infrastructure isn't already massively built out (India, China) it could really be a godsend.

The infrastructure's the biggest challenge at this point. I assume you know that hydrogen cars are already on the road in SoCal: http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

Tracer, I hope to god Bush is right.

uh-oh!

blind squirrels and nuts and all that

I don't really have anything to add here other than the sinking suspicion that our country's collapse is inevitable and we should be planning on how we are going to bounce out of the wreckage rather than hopelessly trying to stop it. Fucked if I know how to make that bounce, though.

Start by rolling back interest rates, which will inflate prices in the housing sector. Americans will be able to borrow against their rising home equity at advantageous rates, and the perception of growing wealth will encourage them to spend, spend, spend. That should give the ol' economy a nice kick in the pants!

http://tbn0.google.com/hosted/images/c?q=522edbf93c4b8c93_landing

Start by rolling back interest rates, which will inflate prices in the housing sector. Americans will be able to borrow against their rising home equity at advantageous rates, and the perception of growing wealth will encourage them to spend, spend, spend. That should give the ol' economy a nice kick in the pants!

I really hope you're joking

you could start by not raping this generation of american workers, who are already under record amounts of individual debt, for the sake of their parents' retirement.

Fuck a poorly run company, fuck a union that works pretty much exclusively for a poorly run company, and fuck states that thrive off poorly run companies.

http://www.hbo.com/thewire/img/episodeguide/season01/ep05_omar_walk_street.jpg

xpost to dan re "how to make bouncie?"

One nation
Under God
Indivisible
With liberty and justice for all

> Start by rolling back interest rates, which will inflate prices in the housing sector. Americans will be able to borrow against their rising home equity at advantageous rates, and the perception of growing wealth will encourage them to spend, spend, spend. That should give the ol' economy a nice kick in the pants!

I really hope you're joking

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, November 19, 2008 12:32 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I lolled.

you know what is amazing? the new york subway system is FUCKED. they may close the W line. they're going to halve the G line. they're going to reduce the number of trains between 2am and 5am. they're closing hundreds of booths and laying off hundreds of attendants. this is after more than a decade of unprecedented growth in the financial capital of the world. and THE STATIONS STILL LOOK AND SMELL LIKE SEWERS.

oh no we'll definitely send millions of our boys to get murdered to keep that indivisible bit, even if the chunk that's trying to leave is the poorly-run-enterprise chunk