The Big 3

[ZenLunatic]

Do you feel health care is a privelege, right, or responsibility?

 

responsibility

[mfwahl]

responsibility

We're in a global economy (and most of the industrialized world has universal health care), especially when it comes to cars, so I think in this case right or responsibility, we end up at the same answer: we need universal health care.

[ZenLunatic]

We're in a global economy (and most of the industrialized world has universal health care), especially when it comes to cars, so I think in this case right or responsibility, we end up at the same answer: we need universal health care.

 

 

I dont know much about healthcare or what it takes to get universal healthcare so I cant say, but if you're company supplied you health insurance and your company went bankrupt, you better get some on your own. You can ask for universal healthcare as a right when no program exists.

[bjorn_skurj]

right now

OK. Give up your health insurance, and donate the money you would pay to the charity of your choice. Right now.

[ZenLunatic]

OK. Give up your health insurance, and donate the money you would pay to the charity of your choice. Right now.

 

I have a job and pay for my health insurance that it offers. If I lost my job or my company went under, I wouldnt be crying because I have no health insurance. I would understand that the way it works. People arent giving up health insurance for the greater good, the company they relied on failed them.

[JUDE]

I used to have really good health insurance when I worked for DANA Co. (UAW). That lasted up until 2001 when they filed for bankruptcy and closed like 35% of their facilities including the one I worked at. Unfortunately I had to do what most other people in similar situations do, go out and find a new job and get new insurance.

 

Now I know most of this debate is over retiree benefits and legacy costs, but as I recall, in the case of DANA-UAW retirees, they were pretty much hung out to dry by the bankruptcy. A point I found interesting was that, to my knowledge, the UAW didn

[jimmyjimmy]

[ZenLunatic]

I think there is a lesson to be learned here. Your benefits comes from a company and your benefits are only good if that company is good. There just isnt anything more to it than that. Those are the rules. Learn to lose gracefully. Beware that your company can go under. Unknowing of the rules doesnt excuse anything.

 

It is a bad situation for the people that were promised certain benefits or money, that's why the heads of these companies need to roll. This kind of bad business needs to be punished harshly.

[MattZ]

I agree that something like health benefits is and should be contingent on both continued employment and survival of the company. You can always get a new job with insurance or buy insurance in the market if your company goes under. But retirement benefits are something different entirely. People continue to harp on the risks to social security but not many people pay attention to how underfunded pensions are. People are counting on retirement money that just won't be there. I am much more worried about that.

[ZenLunatic]

I agree that something like health benefits is and should be contingent on both continued employment and survival of the company. You can always get a new job with insurance or buy insurance in the market if your company goes under. But retirement benefits are something different entirely. People continue to harp on the risks to social security but not many people pay attention to how underfunded pensions are. People are counting on retirement money that just won't be there. I am much more worried about that.

 

Social security is a gonna fail. Yeah people are counting on pensions and social security and they will be disappointed when it doesnt come because its run very poorly. Its not really secure. I think this is the reason companies are not really doing pensions anymore, its harder to rely on and maintain. These things are of the past in my opinion. 401k or IRAs makes more sense.

 

I think we need to stop the social security program. My advice to the young, dont count on social security to be there. Save your own and protect your wealth on your own. Dont count on social security or pensions, you could get burned.

[Moe_Syzlak]

I used to have really good health insurance when I worked for DANA Co. (UAW). That lasted up until 2001 when they filed for bankruptcy and closed like 35% of their facilities including the one I worked at. Unfortunately I had to do what most other people in similar situations do, go out and find a new job and get new insurance.

 

Now I know most of this debate is over retiree benefits and legacy costs, but as I recall, in the case of DANA-UAW retirees, they were pretty much hung out to dry by the bankruptcy. A point I found interesting was that, to my knowledge, the UAW didn

[JUDE]

You worked for Dana? In Toledo or elsewhere? The marketing firm I owned in '90s represented Dana's aftermarket division. Though I think they sold off that division; I haven't been in the auto industry for about 8 years.

 

/derail

 

Plymouth, MN (Minneapolis) DANA-SOHAD

[Edie]

Today's Automotive news....

 

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EDITORIAL

The cost of GM's death

 

If Congress thinks a bailout of General Motors is expensive, it should consider the cost of a GM failure.

Let's be clear. The alternative to government cash for GM is not a dreamy Chapter 11 filing, a reorganization that puts dealers and the UAW in their place, ensuring future success. No, even if GM could get debtor-in-possession financing to keep the lights on (which it can't), Chapter 11 means a collapse of sales and a spiral into a Chapter 7 liquidation. GM's 100,000 American jobs will die. Health care for a million Americans will be lost or at risk. Hundreds of GM's 1,300 suppliers will die. Their collapse could take down Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC, perhaps even North American transplants. Dealers in every county of America will close.

 

The government will face greater unemployment, more Americans without health insurance and greater pension liabilities. Criticize Detroit 3 executives all you want. But the issue today is not whether GM should have closed Buick years ago, been tougher with the UAW or supported higher fuel economy standards. In the next two to four months, GM will run out of cash and turn out the lights. Only government money can prevent that. Every other alternative is fantasy. The $25 billion in loans that Congress approved to partially fund improvements in fuel economy? Irrelevant. Dead automakers do not invest in technology.

 

The collapse of the global financial system has crushed the American car market, dried up revenues for the Detroit 3 and highlighted their weaknesses.

Each of the Detroit 3 is in crisis. But Ford, which borrowed big two years ago and thus has more cash today, may skip a bailout and the strings attached. Cerberus, which bought Chrysler last year, doesn't deserve money. Government cash might help sell Chrysler to a strategic owner.

Some Detroit critics want their pound of flesh: Throw the bums out and install a government czar. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson won't use any of his $700 billion bank bailout money to help manufacturers. In any case, he'd need a guarantee that a bailout would make Detroit "viable."

Well, nobody -- not even AIG -- is insuring guarantees for viability.

 

The taxpayer needs protection and an upside. GM's top management may need to go. Government-as-shareholder deserves a big voice. Those details can be worked out. The Detroit 3 CEOs and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger had better tell two critical congressional hearings next week what sacrifices they are prepared to make.

 

But the stark fact remains: Absent a bailout, GM dies, and with it much of manufacturing in America. Congress needs to do the right thing -- now.

[ZenLunatic]

Today's Automotive news....

 

I would have to say you are in a minority on that opinion. You are only thinking of yourself getting bailed out because most of us know that the bailout of GM is a bad idea. Yeah we know GM going down is a huge blow, but you dont know for sure that GM cant survive chapter 11. If it cant, that its own fault. Someone else will come in and make a real profitable car company that will be able to compete. I would not being counting on GM to pull through with or without any government help. Either way, there will be massive restructuring and downsizing.

[mfwahl]

Pretty good Op-Ed in the NY Times on Sunday by Wes Clark.

What

[Good Old Neon]

It

[JUDE]

It

[MattZ]

It

[Edie]

I would have to say you are in a minority on that opinion. You are only thinking of yourself getting bailed out because most of us know that the bailout of GM is a bad idea. Yeah we know GM going down is a huge blow, but you dont know for sure that GM cant survive chapter 11. If it cant, that its own fault. Someone else will come in and make a real profitable car company that will be able to compete. I would not being counting on GM to pull through with or without any government help. Either way, there will be massive restructuring and downsizing.

 

Point 1: You clearly don't know me. Moreover, I am in the USED car business, by and large.

 

Point 2: Do you really have the stomache to find out what it would be like if the big three went out of business here? As has been stated by those who actually know something about the car business, Chap 11 is not really an option for a maker of an item that people buy for use for 4+ years. Would you buy a GM vehicle if it were in Chapter 11? Right. And "massive restructuring and downsizing" is worse than it going away completely?

 

Point 3: I would tell you to go F yourself, but I am above that. Really, I am.

 

Also, here are a couple of senators looking at the big picture. What a surprise.

[bjorn_skurj]

How?

 

Do you think that the majority of the autoworkers would trade their current negotiated health insurance for some govenment provided plan?

I heard on the TV that GM pays more money for its workers' healthcare than they do for steel.

[cryptique]

Do you think that the majority of the autoworkers would trade their current negotiated health insurance for some govenment provided plan?

I'm not going to debate government-provided healthcare here, but if it were a choice between having a job and not having a job, my guess is that the auto workers would suddenly get pretty enthusiastic about a government-run plan.

[Duck-Billed Catechist]

Also, here are a couple of senators looking at the big picture. What a surprise.

Well, all of these bailout programs have winners and losers. Obviously the companies that don't get anything suffer by comparison. Additionally, a moratorium on foreclosures hurts first-time home buyers, etc. That doesn't necessarily preclude any of these steps, but I do think that aspect of it needs to be discussed.

 

Also, it seems that most can agree that GM is very important to the US economy. However, what is the model for their recovery other than government loans? They are going to face a major reorganization one way or another. I'm not sure that their importance to the economy necessitates a bailout unless it can be demonstrated that the company can also be salvaged long-term.

[Central Scrutinizer]

This has been a fascinating discussion -- there's a feature in this weekend's WSJ that espouses "just say no" to the big 3 -- I'm sorry I didn't happen upon it sooner.

 

I find it intriguing that not only the United States, but the world, finds itself at a juncture in energy, infrastructure, environment, finance, health and manufacturing/production. The cartoon about the dinosaur is apt because as a civilization we are as close to sealing our doom as can be, and may have already witnessed our own terminal disease -- unless we can rescue ourselves in the 11th hour and 59th minute. Capitalism has brought us here economically as much as the dichotomy of democracy vs. communism has brought us here politically. In each case, we've hurdled down the same blind road, doing everything it takes to maneuver every unexpected curve, rather than assessing whether we're even on the right road.

 

I watched a program recently on PBS about the great depression, and what we couldn't realize before but are fast being forced to appreciate is how capitalism hurdled us into that economic abyss, how those who profited from the process were utterly helpless, grabbing at financial gears like the engineer of a runaway train. And what ensued was as socialist a time as any "democracy" had seen.

 

The idea of bailouts, to oversimplify, seems a reward, a mulligan, to those whose greed, and absence of ethics and integrity who sought the uncontrolled momentum and headlong direction.

 

Not a great example, but I thought about the dot-com bomb at the turn of the century. Those lost in the rush for fool's gold didn't deserve to be bailed out. It's not comparison to the auto industry; save for the fact that innovation resurrected the IT industry and brought back profit and advancement from the ashes.

 

While considering the rest of the world and our place in it, you have to be wearing some pretty stout blinders not to realize that our biggest world competition is heavily subsidized. Free trade has been a laudable goal but it seems we've taken the biggest beating trying to level the playing field, while bungling our own industries with intermittent protectionism mixed with loopholes that allow our manufacturing to squirt to cheaper markets.

 

Whatever the U.S. government does financially will likely get industry moving again; but before it gets a push, we'd better damn well make sure what direction we want to apply momentum towards.

 

Rather than bail out an existing auto industry, why not let the existing one fail and subsidize, or contract, to retool the industry to build alternative vehicles -- electric cars -- hell cable cars. Reward innovation, put people to work, let the country benefit to affordable access to the fruits of its labor and investment.

 

Upward redistribution of wealth indeed. I think the emperors have done a great job of convincing us not only of their new wardrobe, but have got us wearing it and wondering why we're still cold.

[JUDE]

I'm not going to debate government-provided healthcare here, but if it were a choice between having a job and not having a job, my guess is that the auto workers would suddenly get pretty enthusiastic about a government-run plan.

 

Nor am I.

I just find it hard to believe under any circumstance where the UAW membership would approve giving back their health care benefits to allow the Big 3 to pay into the Fed plan. Also, on it

[bjorn_skurj]

What is the status of union contracts if GM, etc., goes into Chapter 11? Are they still in effect?