Import parts make domestic parts seem cheap, so I don't see your point.

And for the love of all things good and holy, please learn to spell "dealer."

 

I agree with you on the suspension/enginering lacking at GM.

However, the Colorado name competes with the Ranger, and I think Colorado wins. Besides, Durango is a city in California and no one complains of that name. Oh yeah, and the Lightning is being dropped, so what does that say?

 

It says that the beancounters think it won't make money.

 

The future doesnt look good for GM. Health care is costing them $5 billion a year. 90% of their profits come from GMAC-GMs financial arm. Incentives have been helping volume, but now people have grown weary of rebates.
There was a story in the Detroit News that said GM was shutting down the Lansing MI plant that produces the SSR for 5 weeks because of a 300 day supply at current sales levels. Hello, thats a 10 months supply and into the next model year! Maybe more incentives...
Solara is Toyotas competition to the G35, if you ask me.

 

Everybody is talking about Nissan up 32%. Toyota is not small, and they were up 18% with boring cars. The kind of cars Chevy/Buick should be offering.

-B

 

Yea right

We're very happy with our 2003 Toyota RAV4!

It's deserved!!!!!!!!! There's no CAMARO available now!

There's nothing the General builds that I'm interested in except the C6 Vette.

 

I know me, Darth Xed, and Big Als Z did our part and bought a brand new GM this past year. 2005 Will hopfully be better with all the new mainstream high volume cars that will be out. G6, Cobalt, Impala, Monte, HHR.

 

I am continually amazed at how little most people know about how the economy works.

We have been running trade deficits for decades. If they are really so bad, why are we not all broke as a nation?

2. Reasons. 1. Wealth Creation. The US economy creates value because of our industries. Information, technology, we generate things that are worth something and that makes up for the cash that we bleed.

2. and more important than #1, Foreign re-investment. Sure the profits go back to Japan, but they spend that money back here building billion dollar manufacturing plants and bidding out supplier contracts and employing blue collar workers in fairly high-wage jobs.

Go to Smyrna TN and tell the thousands that work for Nissan there plus the thousands more that work at supplier companies that buying Japanese hurts America.

Same thing With Wal-mart. I hate all the wal-mart bashing going on out there, becaue most of it is based in myth. Yes a lot of stuff from wal-mart comes from China, because it can be made cheaply. Would you rather buy a Vacuum cleaner worth $100 for $80 at Wal-mart made in China or would you rather buy a $100 vacuum for $180 made in Alabama?

Ban foreign production and all the sudden your standard of living drops massively because your cost of living went up 200%. Then companies are going broke because they can't sell their now-overpriced products, laying workers off, who can't afford to live because the cost of living went up. So how does that help America?

Cheap stuff means a higher standard of living for everybody. I can save 20% on my groceries at Wal-mart vs. a regular grocery. That's like a $100 raise per month...just like my boss giving me $1200 a year more. That kind of real buying power increase helps lower income people more than upper income people because a greater percentage of a lower-income person's money will go to essential goods.

Can you even comprehend what Wal-Mart has done for the U.S retaill industry? People cry about Wallyworld destroying mom & pop stores but the truth is 75% of Wal-Mart employees get benefits and in most rural communities they actually INCREASE average wages when a new Wallyworld opens.

Wal-marts distribution technologies have revamped the whole industry as other companies have copied their techniques. The US Military has even copied some of the technology interms of logistics management. When a new store gets built, construction firms make money, Housecleaning companies get nice contracts to clean stores. There is so much money trickling down from walmart out into the economy it would boggle your mind.

But that's the problem with economics, nobody ever sees the complete picture, so they form flawed conclusions.

Everybody whines about outsourcing. One notable economist said that outsourcing is vital because the kinds of jobs that usually get outsourced are lower wage or lower value jobs, which frees up labor force in the U.S. to go into newer, higher value/higher wage industries. At 5.4% unemployment (Remember, classical economics says 5% unemployment is considered full employment...too hard to dip below 5%) you have to ship some jobs overseas to free up workforce for new jobs.

 

You had me in complete agreement till you got to the outsourcing part.

Anything that has to do with computer operation is being outsourced simply because the person sitting at the keys can be had at lower pay & next to no additional benefits. Yet because of hyperspace there is no transportation or any costs outside of setting up a link. Taxes? Lower.

You have people in India managing our health records, people in China doing our engineering, and people in other very low paying countries including Eastern Europe doing everything from providing customer service, to billing and a whole range of other jobs that need nothing more than a computer hookup.

If you are freeing up the labor force to move into higher value jobs, you need higher value jobs to go in to. I don't see any high value field outside of nursing where we are chronically short of people, but a wealth of low paying jobs that seemingly are having trouble finding people, even teenagers, to employ.

 

Guy, I will concede your point to a degree. India is the exception as they have a skilled technical workforce.

But interestingly, what is happening now is that labor costs in India are skyrocketing because of all the tech work going there. So, it is all of the sudden nowhere near as hot of a place to outsource to as a couple of years ago. Jobs are actually coming back here from India.

Mexico is losing mfg jobs to China. Years of exporting jobs to Mexico has increased their average wages to the point that Chinese labor is now cheaper. The cycle continues. It is a way to increase standard of living in poor countries while we benefit as well from cheaper goods and a net effective increase in household buying power.

Besides, no one has effectivlely addressed how we are going to stop the jobs from going overseas? Go to the ports and inspect containers full of jobs? LOL.

Who gets to decide which jobs go and which have to stay? I still say its an OK thing. Outsourcing lowers costs of production, which means lower cost of goods. Supply and demand says when the cost drops sales will increase, meaning more net revenue to the company, which is then used to grow the company, expand locations, hire more admin and sales staff, etc. Eventually the company makes up for the production jobs it sent abroad through sheer growth.

Its been said we are only outsourcing about 50,000 jobs a year anyway, vs an average net job creation of 150,000 per MONTH (1.8m/yr). If you watch Lou Dobbs tonight you get the sky-is-falling picture of all of this w/o any of the larger context.

 

BTW,

While everyone was debating about foreign cars taking over our domestic market, did anyone stop to notice that the only automakers that are seeing market share increases (Foreign or Domestic) are the same automakers that didn't put all their cards in SUVs? (I'm not talking about pickup trucks, which still are top sellers)

Which automakers make more SUVs than any other? GM and Ford. Chrysler has the Durango and to a lesser extent, the PT Cruiser. That's it.

Now, how many does Ford have? GM?

Where has GM and Ford been hit hard? Cars!

What is leading the sales gain of not just Chrysler, but Toyota, Nissan, and other foreign brands? Cars!!

Ford's biggest bright spot in cars is the Mustang and to a lesser extent the FiveHundred, their newest. GM's? Cadillac (which is relatively all new across the board, save the DeVille) and the Impala (which comes with enough bribe money on the hood to seriously dent it).

It not that Nissan or Toyota are the bad guys here (most of their big sellers are made here in the USA!). It's that our own domestic industry went chasing after SUVs and either ignored cars or looked at them as basic appliences. To this very day, they are even still marketing them as such. Pretty soon, you'll have coupons in the Pennysaver or the Sunday paper.

That is, except for Chrysler.

 

Wal-mart employees are the indentured servants of the modern era...the employees don't get a living wage, and Wal-mart has gone to some pretty distressing lengths to squash any kind of organizing (ironically, they are so eager to stake a claim to the Chinese marketplace, they will let Chinese workers organize)

and when Wal-mart opens in some rural backwater, the profits are not, i repeat, NOT recirculated in the local community, whereas the local mom and pop places did...Every dollar they make goes back to Bentonville for one purpose only: to create more wal-marts in other places

 

Why do I get the feeling that some suit at GM is saying this exact thing? Too much money for too little value on uninspiring cars throughout 90% of the line, and it's the consumer's fault for not buying it?

Hopefully GM will get their act together on this stuff. Otherwise I predict another year of losing share.

 

Wrong. I work in the IT consulting industry (quite possibly the biggest culprit for offshoring) and outsourcing to Indians is ACCELERATING. A lot. You don't need to look hard to learn that: http://www.computerworld.com/managem...,96696,00.html

 

Rising Wages in India threatening Outsourcing Market:

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/specials/...9150917,00.htm