Thread: 25,000 GM jobs going away.....keep buying foreign vehicles A

Keep on buying them Toyota's and Honda's and when your job is on the line someday don't cry to me about it!

Yes, I have heard it before "My Toyota is made in Texas" Yeah and what kind of wage and BENEFITS does that American employee earn? Not what the memebers of the UAW are getting...for now anyway. Bye bye pension, bye bye health plan...and when your computer job goes to India I should cry for you?

Keep on importing illegal immigrants America and export your jobs and wealth to China! It is a recipe for disaster and America is going to be a great place when 500 million people live here but if I have mine what do I care right? lol

JackSmith--I am a proud General Motors FAN. My family has owned nothing but GM Cars for at least 3 generations. They made a big mistake investing all that money in the SUVs. Americans made the mistake of buying them. Now with gas prices up, everyone is scurrying to find the "efficient" automobile.

AMERICANS!

STOP BUYING ANYTHING!!

Take command of our economy. Control it by controlling the dollars.

Stop buying anything. Just Stop!!

To save our jobs, we have to stop spending for anything except the essentials and spread that around. Do not shop in the same store. Spread the dollars you must spend across the board.

Pay off those credit cards, whatever it takes as fast as possible. Do not let these currency people earn your interest dollars. Get that balance down as fast as possible whatever you have to do.

Do not use a debit card unless absolutely necessary. The currency folks earn "fees" each time you use it from the store. Make the trip to the bank; get the cash; use it to pay. Nationwide, this will break the banks and they'll wake up and say, "What's Happening?"

Trust me on this, please. If you are low on cash, eat beans! Eat macaroni, eat rice, eat anything but something you have to use a credit card to buy. Get those thermostat setting up to 80 or higher when you leave the house and DO NOT put them below 75 except for a very brief moment. DO NOT USE YOUR STOVE more than necessary. Eat cold foods to keep the heat from the stove out of your house. We can do this. Growing up, this is how we lived every day!!

The new bankruptcy law will allow a credit card company, on an unsecured debt, to take the equity in your home through a foreclosure sale, even if you are current on your home mortgage. They can force the sale of your home, on a quick sale deal, which means you will lose it and almost all your equity; and will be homeless and penniless. You will then, NEVER qualify for another home mortgage in your lifetime; probably won't qualify for a rental unit which is based upon good credit; and you won't have the money for the deposit anyway.

So, Welcome to the Dorms for Drones, thereafter.

PAY OFF THOSE CREDIT CARDS NOW....Whatever It Takes. Keep them clear for LIFE EMERGENCIES....because they are coming.

We are being set up BIG TIME!! You've got to trust me on this.

That's why after all these years the PRESIDENT changed the bankruptcy law and was quite proud of it if you will recall!!

The man is insane. He is off his rocker. He is a political psychopath on the loose!

Originally Posted by Judy

JackSmith--I am a proud General Motors FAN. My family has owned nothing but GM Cars for at least 3 generations. They made a big mistake investing all that money in the SUVs. Americans made the mistake of buying them. Now with gas prices up, everyone is scurrying to find the "efficient" automobile.

For the most part Judy is correct. GM has no one to blame but it's self as well as the American public. This has nothing to do with buying foreign cars or illegal immigration but everything to do with poor management and an over demanding pension plans that many corporations can't afford anymore. Case in point United Airlines, the rank and file took a big cut in pay and benefits to try and save their jobs and company, now the courts have taken away most of those overly generous pension plans while upper management took big bonuses for themselves. For christ sakes, a Hummer "3" designed for the ladys out there????No one to blame here but us!

Judy, I agree with you on the credit cards. They are financial death if used improperly. How you should use them depends on a lot of things, mainly on your ability to repay them quickly.

On stopping the spending, that is bad advice. Our economy depends on all of us buying, selling, working, producing. If everyone took your advice, the economy would crater, the stock market would tank, and we would be back in a Great Depression. Frugality is good. Living in the dark, eating cold food, and hording your money is not. Panic is the worst thing that can happen to an economy. If a panic takes hold, we will all be out of jobs.

Now as far as buying anything made overseas, I try to avoid it as much as possible. I just got rid of a Lexus and bought a one year old Mercury Marquis. That's great, isn't it? Buying a U.S. made car...oops, wait a minute, the door sticker says it is MADE IN CANADA! It is hard to buy anything with only U.S. content...anything! Well, at least the name is made in the U.S.

ScareCrow--Electric rates are going to increase nationwide quite dramatically. Ours have already risen and Progress Energy in North Carolina will raise theirs in October because coal prices increased due to greater worldwide "demand". How do you control the cost of energy? Lower consumption. There are only so many things you can do to control the cost of energy and that is the few things you can do to reduce consumption this summer.

Americans have the lowest personal savings in the history of the United States. They need to "hord" alot just to be "normal".

Americans need to totally payoff their credit cards and keep the line of credit for actual emergenices. With no savings, and their cards maxed out, they have no "safety net".

In order to get personal savings back up to normal while at the same time paying down the credit cards, they can not "spend" except on essentials.

This will not cause a PANIC. The panic caused by the Great Depression was a total loss of confidence in the banking industry and everyone took out their money and stuffed it under mattresses causing the stock market to crash due to lack of confidence. So few of our jobs are created by production, that every dollar you spend is just helping a foreign country and not creating or sustaining many jobs for Americans anyway.

During the Depression, almost 100% of our goods we purchased were made in the US. Now probably less than 50% are made in the US. We are depression proof in that regard.

If Americans stop buying new houses, the value of the home they own will increase dramatically....they grow equity instead of debt. The only person the new home makes money for is a sleazy developer hiring illegal Hispanic Construction Crews and the Lender financing the home.

Unless you buy a car that is actually assembled in the US with US made parts, some of that helps American Workers, but not 100% because today the cars, steel, parts, electronics are made all over the world. Buying the American Made Car or a car manufactured somewhere by one of our Auto Makers benefits the American Economy because the profits remain here and their corporate engineering remains here.

GM's cars are very reasonably priced and they pay top of the line wages and salaries. So, the market can take care of the cost of the car using American Workers and still yield an attractive profit to the automaker so long as sales hold. The competition is so stiff, they do not have the margin to weather a slump or an abrupt change in the market. That is what happend to both GM and Ford putting all their bets on SUVs. Very short-sighted marketing analysis. This is a Management Problem, not a cost problem, not an economic issue, not a pricing issue. The TOP DOGS paid all the money....GOT IT WRONG!! They all need to be fired and replaced with reasonable minded people who know the short and long-term automobile market. They (the Top Dogs) will blame the workers, blame the market, blame gas prices, blame someone of course besides themselves. They want to run the company into the ground through their own mistakes and still walk away with all their money. Sound familiar?

We'll hear it soon from Ford. I estimate two weeks or sooner.

It wasn't their work force; it wasn't cost; it wasn't anything but the idiotic decision to put all their bets on SUVs, which unless you are going camping, are really not a satisfactory vehicle for urban living. Consumers have decided that which has caused the problem for GM and Ford and they did so without any warning.

NOT SPENDING AND SAVING will make the necessary corrections in our economy that are solely needed and long over due. They will not cause a Great Depression...that is not possible. However, these actions will rejuvenate a solid sound economy with the placement of money in proper balance. Presently, they are completely out of balance with debt to way too high and savings far too low. This condition has citizens at complete risk of financial failure and far too vulnerable for "What's Afoot". In a short period of time, very short period of time, this needs to be corrected to ride the storm as well as regain the power and flexibility money gives you.

IMHO

I thought I understood the narrator to say that GM workers were earning $54 per hour??

I've been buying GM products since my first car...sitting outside right now are two Chevy trucks and two Buicks...Fords are okay..but I prefer the GM's.

Yup, if we start saving we'll put our country back into our hands rather than the hands of foreign investors. At the moment China is heavily invested in our bond market...which is the reason that our government doesn't put tariffs on their products or piss them off. If they pulled all their money out of our markets, we'd be in instant depression. Right now China and Japan are holding us up, our heads above the water. If we started saving...then we could do that ourselves. We must if we're ever going to be independent again.

That would also put some confidence back in our dollar which has recently taken one heck of a beating against the Euro...and other foreign currencies. If the rest of the world loses confidence in our fiat money, it's katy-bar-the-door for the US.

Remember that when you pick up a piece of that Chinese made junk. The consumer is the only one that can send this crap back to China without causing our government grief or financial repercussions. They can send all that junk over here, but they can't make us BUY it.

RR

Exactly RoadRunner!!

DON'T SPEND, SAVE!!

Don't worry about a panic or the Great Depression. That won't happen as a result of lowering your debt and increasing your savings, something you need to do immediately to the extent possible.

Judy, I didn't mean to get you excited!

You make good points, though I think some of your conclusions are wrong. I have to make a living and I have to get to work, so I will just mention a couple of them.

GM is in trouble because with each car they make, they spend more money on legacy benefits than they do on steel! Unions have their place, but in the car industry they drove the costs up in wages, benefits, etc. to the point that the door was opened for the foreigners. Their management has been overpaid and underperforming for years. Combine that with mediocre quality of U.S. made cars, especially in the 60's and 70's (I remember them well) and Honda and Toyota got a foot hold. I recognize the benefit of buying the Marquis instead of the Avalon, but still the car is assembled in Canada with parts from who knows where. The value added component, which is the most important, is foreign.

On the fat cat issue, you guys are exactly on point. This is coming from a traditional, conservative Republican. The salaries and perks paid to U.S. CEO's is obscene. They routinely get pay increases of 20-40% per annum and get way too much credit when a company succeeds and not enough blame when it does not. I make commercial loans to troubled companies and in the mergers/acquisition market for a living and I have studied corporations from the inside out for 35 years. CEO/top officer pay has outstripped the wages of the middle and lower level workers by huge percentages. The gap between the rich in this country and the vanishing middle class is widening in a way that is reminiscent of what goes on in these banana republics south of the border.

Do you see a pattern emerging? Senor Bush, whose tax cut provided the greatest benefit to the wealthiest Americans, encourages the importation of cheap (illegal) labor and other policies which benefit a wealthy few. My God, I never thought these words would come out of my mouth (or my computer). On this issue the Democrats are right. We are being forced into a third world style economy where there will be no middle class. These same fat cats who get huge raises and multi-million dollar salaries, slash and burn middle and lower level jobs. Jack Welsh at GE got the ball rolling on this vicious trend years ago and since he did it at GE, and got the stock price soaring, the other corporate chieftains have followed the sound of the pied piper and done the same. The philosophy is that all that counts is the stock price, to hell with the welfare of the employees. Dump as many as you can and force the rest to work like Trojans to keep their jobs! If you don't believe this, ask anyone who works at GE.

Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, routinely cuts thousands of jobs. Every time there is a bank merger, out the door go good solid, productive Americans who then struggle to find work in a shrinking market. Our economy is going to look like Mexico’s in the very near future. There will be a handful of rich people, a smattering of middle class folks, and a huge and growing underclass. The rich will have the best of everything on their cushy ride on the backs of the poor and live in walled compounds (they already do that) while the rest of us struggle in the barrio.

We need some protectionism in this country and some accountability. It is not a bad thing, as many would have you believe. It worked very well for many years. In the fifties and sixties Americans overpaid each other and enjoyed a good and improving standard of living. This is an economy which could become mostly self-sufficient if we had the will to do it. There is virtually nothing we need from overseas, except some minerals and of course oil. That is where Judy’s strongest point is, energy conservation could help us reduce that dependency on foreign oil. The foreigners could start pulling their investment out, but where would they put their money if we are not taking a huge percentage of the world’s production of consumer goods? Anyone with a brain knows that the U.S. is the economic engine that drives the world economy. You can bet if we got tough with our foreign trading partners, they will quickly change their tune. This so-called need for international trade is mostly bull crap. It is driven by the super rich and the multi-nationals like GE who don’t give a rip where their products are made, as long as they can make them cheap. They say our economy would bog down without it, well if you ship all your jobs overseas, what the hell difference does that make? If you are on the losing end of the job market, your personal economy is already in a tailspin. Besides, the short term pain would be worth it to be independent of the scurrilous foreign countries who want our money but hate our guts.

If the only beneficiaries of a growing economy are the fat cats, who cares if it grows 5% or shrinks 5%. These people have no loyalty to America. GE just moved it’s Asian headquarters to Shanghai. How about that folks? The company founded by Thomas Edison is sucking up to the Chi-Coms. And this will benefit Americans, how? I don't mean to just pick on GE. I used to work at GE Capital and have followed the company. It is just one among many who are guilty of betraying America.

This multiple screwing that the American worker is getting is a national tragedy. Our government refuses to control our borders, they allow the transfer of our jobs overseas, they allow the large corporations all kinds of corporate welfare so they can pay their corporate titans billions, and average folks are being put out of work daily and forced into low wage jobs, particularly older and less skilled workers. The revolution is near! (I haven’t said that since the sixties).

I don’t know what party I will join, but if something doesn’t change with the Republicans, I’m outta here, after 37 years!

Scarecrow..that 'oil shortage' is created. It isn't real. This country is absolutely the most independent country in the world as far as providing our needs...I believe we need a couple of minerals...but that's all. But the rest of this importing is done to 'help other countries' with our markets created by enterprising Americans!

Many in my family have been in oil exploration since the 40's...and I married a man who had a career in exploration for foreign companies. We traveled around the world, exploring for oil, for many years. There is enough oil in Colorado to provide this nations energy needs for another 100 years if we continue to rely on fossil fuels.

This 'shortage' was created almost half a century ago...they shut down so many wells...taxed exploration in this country almost out of existence...ruined the economy of at least five western states in so doing. There are millions of barrels of oil in Alaska but the eco-terrorists have raised so much cain about drilling there that they've not been able to explore in Alaska for 45 years. This 'shortage' has been put to really good use via political crap...it's been used to create inflation and deflation and fear.

True, there are areas where the oil is cheaper to extract than others...a barrel of oil from the north sea costs more than a barrel of oil from the sands of the middle east...a couple of dollars or so.

The economies of the middle eastern countries are mostly supported by oil and oil exploration. British Petroleum, Aramco, and others helped produce the wealth of those countries. They could not have done it themselves and for the most part still use foreign individuals to extract the oil that those countries control. Venezuela nationalized their oil companies in the late 50's or early 60's and brought Gulf oil to their knees. The main reason that the middle eastern countries don't nationalize is that their national employees lack the training to do so....it took my husband two years to teach some of those employees how to lace and tie their work boots. So no nationalized oil companies.

Do we need to import oil? NO! no! and NO! This is a political tool and that only. Interestingly, as oil was discovered in other countries...our 'supply' dwindled comensurately. Get the picture??

RR

ScareCrow!! You are exactly right about the top CEOs draining the resources of the company to then claim they need Third World environments to compete. It is a bunch of bunk!!

We can't control the companies and the decisions they make, even as shareholders, they pay more attention to the larger holders, but we can control our decision to spend or save.

I still think holding back on expenditures for right now and getting the credit cards paid down and some savings built up will do two things:

1) improve the financial situation for Americans

2) get everybody else's attention

That can't be all bad!!