Quote:
Originally Posted by corporatejay
They have a sharty product that no one wants and ridiculous labour costs. Their competitors even charge more for their products and still outsell them (specifically the civic). I'm all for "saving them" but something needs to be done about their business model, this money needs to come with strings.
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Ah yes, but what strings do you anticipate a pro-labor Obama administration to give for bailout money? My guess would be that the money would be attached to forcing them to continue to overpay for labor and to avoid layoffs in exchange for way more restrictions and tariffs on imported cars (Lookup autopact agreements of the 1970s and 80s). Net result is the taxpayer picks up the tab for the short-term operating cash shortfall of the big three, and then the consumer pays the long-term tab in perpetuity regardless of which car brand they buy (Import or export due to tariffs).
And for what? The priviledge of having inefficient domestically owned businesses paying a select collection of high school graduates as if they worked in higher skilled, more educationally inclined professions. A side-effect of this would be lower quality and even more out of touch vehicle offerings from the big three as their operating environment within North America would be far less competative. We've been here before, anyone who owned/owns a typical car built by the big three in the 1980s knows exactly what I'm talking about.