Please do us all a favor and make good on your word.

 

The other OEM's have the ability to compete in the volume game (Toyota especially) and continue to do so. They're also contributing to the over-production of cars.

That's the best I can reply to you because I don't understand what you typed.

 

C'mon - out with it. A politically correct world is no fun

 

What the hell planet are you on?

A public company exists soley for the purpose of making money for the shareholder. Nothing more and nothing less.

It isn't to provide jobs, benefits, or feel good attributes to anyone or anything. If the best way for a company to make a profit is to change their core business, so be it. And the same is true if it needs to cut costs.

That is the very basis of a capitalist, free market model.

 

The argument that it was the government that allowed this housing bust to happen is related to the new line being pushed that the Community Reinvestment Act was the cause. This argument is, as usual in the real world, false: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart...h_b_127599.html

The fact of the matter is more likely the reverse. Companies, as many here are plenty willing to admit, are in the business of increasing value. So what are companies with that goal in mind always looking to do? Increase income. How does that happen? Widen the customer base. How do you widen the customer base quickly? Loosen your lending straps and increase the risk on the customer side of the equation. This whole BS argument that it was the everyday man that caused this is pernicious. It assumes the banks were forced to increase interest rates, it assumes they were forced to make MILLIONS of bad loans against their will, it assumes predatory lending doesn't exist, it assumes they were forced to sell those loans off to one another creating a vicious hot-potato collective debt circle, it makes too many false assumptions given the way our economic system is set up. There are regular people out there hell bent on obtaining a loan for a house or some other big ticket item they can't afford. And then there are the millions that don't and are trying to live their lives.

What planet are you on? The reason the capitalist system exists is because it is better at providing the wide range goods and services to a populace as compared to a government that controls the economy. The whole intent behind capitalism is to provide an economic infrastructure, not specifically so companies can be set up to increase specific shareholder value. Your argument merely follows as a functionary result of the true reason and organization underpinning capitalism.

Getting to the core issue of unions, I am generally for the right of unions to exist. It's called free association. Can unions be bad? Yes. Can unions be good? Yes. Congratulations, unions are like anything taken to one extreme or another. Too many unions, too much drag on big companies (though actually very few truly massive companies have unions anymore). Too few unions, and people are forced to work 12 hour days 6 days a week and the term sweatshop starts getting thrown around. Unions have undeniably provided each and every one of us (at least the US and Canadian posters here) benefits of working life not afforded them in the earlier 20th and late 19th centuries. 8-hour days, weekends, benefits...all of them come from unions (including those comprised of sub-teen children) having the stones to challenge companies that back then forced them to work more than 12 hours a day 7 days a week. I have a friend who helped unionize American West Airlines because they were getting treated like crap. Now, after a few years of unionization, they are getting more respect, and the airline is doing better than most, even with unionization. Unions are NOT universally bad, no matter how many people here want to claim otherwise.

 

If it is okay for unions to exist, why not price-fixing between different companies? We're talking about the same sort of shenanigans, IMO.

 

And why are unions so afraid of Right to Work laws preventing them from requiring people to join their unions?

 

This is a lame comparison. One is a group of people organized for the purpose of protecting the rights and respect of workers, the other is an anti-competitive practice that violates anti-trust laws. You seem to be implying that unions "fix" the price of labor. They don't in the sense that there is one big union union that determines everything, and then tells all the separate unions what to do. Unions do advise each other and cooperate, but they do not control each other. There are multiple unions for multiple different industries; Pilots unions don't control what the UAW does, just as the SEIU doesn't control teachers' unions. The other factor here is the fact that businesses don't have to accept unions into their fold. Indeed most companies fight them, but not all, and there's still the question of workers' rights. People don't sign away their rights just because they take a job somewhere.

Everyone uses the UAW, the most prominent union and the most corrupt, as exhibit A for why all unions supposedly ruin business, and it just isn't true.

As far as price fixing goes, that's a tactic used by companies to force people to over- or under-pay for a good or service, which is artificial and not based on market realities for a given segment. Companies of all stripes have been found guilty of price-fixing to force competitors out, or to demand more money from customers when it's not earned or built into the value of a product or service. I can see your argument coming a mile away: unions force artificial wage levels for workers, which itself can be an artificial market force.

The key difference is one is talking about pricing inanimate objects and/or services, and the other is talking about people. Taking your argument to its extreme, one could say that laws protecting an 8-hour work day are an artificial market pressure, and thus should be done away with. And that argument can go into some ugly places.

 

Slamnasty, I get where you're coming from, but unions do negotiate for better than market price labor which in itself is a good/bad thing. It's good because well, if the market was left unchecked and free (you know, bernanke utopia) then market prices for wages would be really low becaues employers would have more market power- a fair market wage could be say 40K a year, but you pool together a bunch of starving workers and you've got the only gig in town, youd be amazed how much you can get done for less than minimum wage. Good example would be the market for pilots and flight attendants.

 

Unions are equally non-competitive by "price fixing" labor wages. Perfectly valid comparison. Of course the argument can be taken to all sorts of weird places.

But the "UAW" effect adds thousands of dollars to the cost of American-made cars, more than many (all?) foreign competitors. If you think that's okay then we have to level the buying field by adding serious tariffs on imports. I'm not 100% against protective tariffs. Otherwise you might as well stick a fork in the big 3 now and get it over with.