Big 3 blows it again, Japs eating their lunch

When Boob puts you in his "killfile", what that means is, he ignores one post, then he actually reads every single one of your following posts, and replies twice to each one. The signs of a true obsessive compulsive disorder on his part.

Volvo had a lot of reliability problems back in the '70s, from which they seem to have recovered. It seems that Ford is using Volvo as a "brain bank," since Ford seems to not have any engineering talent of its own anymore.

Mazda and Ford have been allied for a long time, from the days when Toyo-Kogo and Ford teamed up on the Courier/B1600 mini truck project. Mazda has managed to come up with a new "crossover" SUV that seems to be selling very well, which is good for Ford, since they can't seem to design one of their own.

i agree totally with your comments with the exception of one jarring point...you say a Neon is "a piece of crap"...firstly i don't completely agree with you but my main concern is that you state it as a fact rather than opinion and don't support it with any evidence.

you may have very good reason for your view but i find that one comment bugs me for some reason.

i'm new here Bill but have observed you are a prolific and informed poster but i think you've got it wrong with this one...Toyota in particular are known to be a brutal employer, driving their employees to exhaustion with forced overtime and restrictive practices. there are dozens of suicides in which employment at Toyota is implicated.

not only that, they are systematically reducing the "unseen" quality in their vehicles to maximize profits.

i suppose you can argue that all of that is just smart business but if you make your living as an auto worker i suspect you wouldn't agree.

You're equating two things that are not equivalent. I don't know if what you said about Toyota is true or not (sounds like union mentality propaganda) - first I've heard of that. But let's assume it is true for a moment. What does that have to do with GM allowing themselves to be boxed in to where they can't exercise good business practices in that if they find a more efficient way to do a process, they can take one or more workers off that less efficient old process and put them to new tasks that help productivity - helps the company and helps long-term job stability.

I don't see re-assigning workers to more productive jobs as suicide-inducing practices. I see companies not being able to compete by exercising good business practices as being suicidal for the company. Ultimately - yeah that is cruel to the employee when he loses his job because the company is going bankrupt - except the employee forced them to go to that.

OK - so you just showed up here. Great - but why are you picking up on old discussions that stopped months ago and carrying on as if they are current discussions. One of your recent posts starts off "lol...beat me to it..." in response to a post in a thread that dropped off the radar screen several months ago. Are you a troll?

Bill,

no, i'm not a troll. i actually didn't notice how old the threads were that i was replying to and have already posted an apology for that.

as for your specific arguments below, i don't have time to respond fully right now but my general concern is that there seems to be a general mindset developing that auto manufacturing in the "western" world can only be sustained by returning employees to "third world" levels of compensation and working conditions. and before you ask, i am not a production worker nor a union member, i own my own business, and i own two older Dodge vans, so i have no vested interest whatsoever in the welfare of blue-collar workers.

so my question to Americans (just for the record I am British but live in Canada) is; do you want your auto industry to survive by creating difficult or impossible working conditions for the employees? do you want more Wal-Mart level of employment in your country?

at the end of the day there may not be much choice but i just get the sense that there is a bit of an "i'm all right jack, i'm a white-collar guy" kind of mentality developing where people want "somebody else" to do all the hard work and live in ghettos for their trouble while they (we) carry on serenely in our suburbs.

now, i am not a "leftie" and i know society will always be somewhat stratified but i am just concerned that we shouldn't be taking deliberate steps to make things worse than they are.

well, that is a very simplified version of my viewpoint. it is a complex issue for sure and the greatest minds on the planet may well not solve the conundrum.

Have a nice day.

Simon.

I understand now.

Under existing union rules, their jobs will not survive. If you maintain the existing rules, they will be worse off than if they had to work under *reasonable* conditions like everybody else. I'm not proposing coal mine working conditions - just some reasonable rules, not elitist union rules.

So you think a company ought not to be allowed to move its people around within a factory for the most efficient operation, profitability, and protection of jobs? That's all I was pointing out, yet you seem to be taking issue with that. A strange philosophy for anyone who understands economics to even a basic level, especially someone who owns their own business.

If you think the typical U.S. auto worker has been living a ghetto lifestyle, then you are ignorant of what you are discussing.

I disagree. I think some intelligent and honest economists *could* solve it, but, unfortunately we have some of the biggest idiots in the world working on it in Washington as we speak and doing everything they can to make it worse.

Hmm... I must not be expressing myself very well because your accusations against me are totally off what I actually think. Maybe I'll come back to this and try again later. Or not. Really, sometimes internet discussions are depressingly futile as they actually achieve the square root of f*ck all. LOL