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Workers getting paid to do nothing on government money

Right, but since it's not the government paying these peole to do nothing, why is it important?

Federal money was spent on building the plant. In the short term, it has not paid off (I heard other companies are interested in byuying the plant, so it still may pat off long-term). Either way it's a sunk cost, an investment that may or may not pay off. The federal government is not paying the workers.

The government can always buy me a house, and then they don't have to pay me a wage for doing nothing.
Hopefully it won't be important.
 
Oh, OK. I was not making a joke. I really thought they had broadcasted my calculus class.

I didn't hear about Matthews. What did he say?

Famously tingly MSNBC host Chris Matthews decided the whole race came down to, well, race. In one of the more outlandish rants of an outlandish career, Matthews said the right hates Obama more than they want to destroy Al Qaeda, according to The Hill. The rant is too priceless to edit:

“I think they hate Obama. They want him out of the White House more than they want to destroy Al Qaeda. Their No. 1 enemy in the world right now, on the right, is their hatred, hatred for Obama. And we can go into that about the white working class in the South and looking at these numbers we're getting the last couple days about racial hatred in many cases … this isn't about being a better president, they want to get rid of this president,’ he said.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brie...utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterfeed
 
Famously tingly MSNBC host Chris Matthews decided the whole race came down to, well, race. In one of the more outlandish rants of an outlandish career, Matthews said the right hates Obama more than they want to destroy Al Qaeda, according to The Hill. The rant is too priceless to edit:

“I think they hate Obama. They want him out of the White House more than they want to destroy Al Qaeda. Their No. 1 enemy in the world right now, on the right, is their hatred, hatred for Obama. And we can go into that about the white working class in the South and looking at these numbers we're getting the last couple days about racial hatred in many cases … this isn't about being a better president, they want to get rid of this president,’ he said.”

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brie...utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterfeed

I agree that this is not the primary motive of every person on the right, and hating Obama more than they hate Al Qaeda only applies to a very few.

On the other hand, four years ago the Senate Minority Leader annouced that the #1 goal of the party was to make sure Obama was not re-elected. So, it's not like matthews comment is coming from nowhere.
 
I agree that this is not the primary motive of every person on the right, and hating Obama more than they hate Al Qaeda only applies to a very few.

On the other hand, four years ago the Senate Minority Leader annouced that the #1 goal of the party was to make sure Obama was not re-elected. So, it's not like matthews comment is coming from nowhere.

It's Matthews so I do not listen to any of the garbage that comes out of his mouth.
 
As far as this particular plant is concerned it's going to take time to grow a profit when investing in new technologies. I think you know this be fundamental; but just want something to bitch about. I'm sure GM can forgo investment and rake in short term gains by going back to churning out thousands of gas guzzling SUV's that don't sell well anywhere in the world except in the US - but that's how Waggoner and his other short sighted minions got them in trouble in the first place.

By "his other short sighted minions" you must mean the UAW and democratic party members who blocked every CAFE standard increase they could for two decades, and pressured the Reagan administration into anti-Japanese policy because neither management or the unions wanted to compete with them.

It's amazing how the party spins their own faults into rebukes of the republican party and business. To you liberals, it was only redneck republicans pushing for environmental destroying, gas guzzling, crappy American cars.

“It was one of the proudest days of my life, standing there shoulder to shoulder with Owen and lobbying against that CAFE standard and winning. On that particular vote, we would not have won without the UAW.”
 
By "his other short sighted minions" you must mean the UAW and democratic party members who blocked every CAFE standard increase they could for two decades, and pressured the Reagan administration into anti-Japanese policy because neither management or the unions wanted to compete with them.

Yes, the UAW clearly twisted the arm of Ronald "Union Buster" Reagan

In the 15 years before they finally went belly up:

lost $82 billion in just the past four years, and cash management was so poor that five years ago, GM's debt was properly downgraded to junk-bond status.

made astoundingly bad product decisions, such as supporting the poor-selling Pontiac Aztek and cancelling GM's early move into hybrids. And Chevrolet could have been marketing the Volt a decade earlier than it did, thanks to the prescience of Robert Stemple, a Wagoner predecessor who as CEO from 1990 through 1992 greenlighted the development of the EV 1, the first electric car.

• In 2002 ignored urgent trends to focus on car development while reaping 90% of profits from pick-ups and SUVs.

maintained too many divisions and too many lookalike products.

was under-responsive as the economic crisis revealed itself, cutting production only 25%, while Ford cut more than 45% in the first two quarters of this year.

squandered great names like Saab, Opel, Saturn, and Hummer by not properly investing in them and hoping instead to harvest past initiatives and covertly transplant core GM car platforms.

led a misguided joint venture with Fiat that cost GM $2 billion to extricate itself from. He allowed GMAC, when he controlled it, to bathe in the subprime lending market with its disasterous RESCAP subsidiary. Contrast that with the strategy of Ford (F), which got out of that high-risk lending in 2002.

sold GM's valuable GMAC internal financing arm to Cerberus, which also controlled GM competitor Chrysler. In December and January, Cerebrus basically stopped writing retail finance contracts to support GM buyers.


pursued plans to purchase Chrysler, drawing on an anachronistic mindset that saw virtue in bulk operational size and scale efficiencies rather than profits, quality, and reputation.

https://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jun2009/ca2009061_966638.htm

And this is just Waggoner - Roger Smith was just as bad.

I bolded the GMAC sale because out of all the stupid decisions, this one would baffle even a first year business student. GM was so oversaturated with the cost of running so many different brand/divisions that they would often be forced to sell a car for close to or at cost. They would make their money back by financing the purchase of the car through their GMAC branch. For reason known only to him, Waggoner sold off GMAC to a competitor and they stopped financing GM purchases. Cost the company billions long term.

In retrospect, it was probably done because the company was much worse off than he let on and needed fast cash. But that is only because all of the other bad decisions that led up to that point.

Now if you want to say the UAW got GM workers some ridiculous deals over the past 40 years, I'll agree with you - and many of them have either been eliminated or scaled back. But to pin the overall health of the company on the UAW or the democratic party is just laughable.
 
I think what I expect is a government investment to actually pay off. They invest in everything under the sun, except their own citizens.

Are you claiming that, overall, investments in clean energy have not been fruitful? Can you justify that claim?
 
I bolded the GMAC sale because out of all the stupid decisions, this one would baffle even a first year business student.

First year business students are not qualified to analyze a finance company. Besides, GMAC went bankrupt. Twice. Do you know what role auto financing played in that or was it purely mortgage?

Now if you want to say the UAW got GM workers some ridiculous deals over the past 40 years, I'll agree with you - and many of them have either been eliminated or scaled back. But to pin the overall health of the company on the UAW or the democratic party is just laughable.

Who blamed the entire thing on the UAW and [a portion of] the democratic party? All I did was point out one area where the UAW tried to fight market forces hand in hand with management and it ended up destroying both of them. Another role the union played--and a large reason why GM and the others relied so heavily on the American dominant and profitable SUVs instead of innovating better cars--is extending itself into every single parts factory and demanding the same wages at small scale operations as at the large plants. That made it very difficult to compete with Japanese auto makers who had much more price flexibility because they weren't paying exorbitant salaries to every single worker along the line & regardless of experience or lack of expertise.


Another thing worth pointing out is the turn the unions took from early on to the 1980's. One time in the 1940's they volunteered for lower wages if the auto companies would make smaller cars that were more affordable to average citizens. Their push in the 80's and 90's was completely opposite.
 
A quick search shows GM sold off GMAC to raise capital in an effort to lower funding costs of their core business to make it more competitive. I don't get why you're complaining about them branching out too much and again when they started shedding these branches.

They also used the funds from the GMAC sale to pay off legacy costs associated with the unions, and also to buy out union members who were no longer needed. So they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.
 
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