What Is an American Car?

Very GOOD Lloyd, I'll rush out and buy some so that I can NOT get any dividend since they are declaring a loss for FY 2009.

Let's see now - last FY they declared a $2.50 dividend. So with stock price around $65 now that will take--let's see - TWENTY SIX YEARS of dividends before I make back my purchase price of the stock. And that's assuming that such rosy projections of dividends hold - and there's no guarentee the stock price won't drop to practically nothing at the end of that time.

For the price of 2 pieces of Toyota stock I could go buy a lawnmower and spend the summer pushing it around town on the weekend offering to mow people's lawns - and in one summer I could easily make the entire amount of the lawnmower back as well as the gasoline with money left over - and then sell the mower for more money.

Boy, Lloyd, you are SUCH A WISE INVESTOR....NOT!!

Don't try your claptrap about dividends on me. We all know why people buy stock - it's so they can sit on it and hope the price goes up so they can sell it at a profit.

As I said, the stockholders get a pittance in dividends. The bulk of the profit is spent on executive salaries, big fancy office buildings, R&D, and all of the high-dollar jobs - and those jobs are in the country of origin of the company.

They all make the same thing if the car company is foreign or domestic, since there's always going to be a dealership around selling cars - whether they are selling foreign or domestic cars.

Totally true. As I said, MOST hand out a paltry dividend.

To sell. They buy it, assume the stock price will rise, then sell it when the price rises. Why do you think the Dow went up and up and up - stock is a giant Ponzi scheme. If you happen to have real money, you can make far more investing it in venture capital on startups, or building up a business that you know something about.

What part of "helping the US economy than a minimum wage employee would" do you not understand? A min wage employee spends on food, transport, clothing, etc. also.

They would get the same from a domestic manufacturer. I see no net benefit for the foreign manufacturer over the domestic manufacturer to the US economy here.

Not as many and not as high dollar - the ones here simply rework Japanese designs for the US market.

No they don't. There is a cost for every person to the US economy for that person to just exist, walking down the street. In short, someone making $25K a year costs the US economy more to support than they put back into the economy.

The million-dollar executive also costs the US economy the same $26K to support - but he is putting back 50 to 100 times the amount of economic stimulus into the US economy as a rank and file worker puts into the economy. And he isn't as likely to get laid off during an economic downturn.

Others have said it better than I in many other places - the US economy cannot survive based on people flipping hamburgers and selling them to each other. The US economy MUST have industries that create real products. And we are losing them. Meanwhile, other countries are gaining those industries - and countries like Japan, who are probably even more highly developed than the US is - are somehow managing to retain their own manufacturing industries, even against cheap Chinese labor.

The idea that there's such a thing as an "information economy" and it's OK for the US to allow it's manufacturing base to erode because, hey, well, there's all these information jobs that will replace manufacturing, is pure baloney.

Ted

Toyota stock has value, real value. GM's stock will be stuffed into Cracker Jacks and generic cereal boxes in a vain attempt to drum up interest.

So do precious metals and many other things. If your goal is simply to find some place to stick a few million dollars to let them do nothing, then your welcome to buy all the Toy stock you want. But most people who have a few million dollars sitting around doing nothing, prefer to have that money working to make even more money for them. That's called "investing" and sticking money in Toy stock isn't going to do that for you, at least not right now.

Ted