Posted on 10/12/2005 8:17:36 AM PDT by harpu
Forget about General Motors' tumbling stock price, its downgraded debt and its potential $11 billion liability. Robert S. "Steve" Miller's move to put Delphi into bankruptcy proceedings is good news for the auto giant and good news for Detroit.
We have seen this movie before. Like steel and airlines before it, the traditional U.S. auto industry is struggling mightily, but futilely, to shore up a crumbling edifice. All Mr. Miller has done is push the fast-forward button. The end is now near. The sooner we get to the sequel, the better.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
give us a readers digest version.
If I've interpreted the excerpt correctly U.S. industry is headed for the toilet...and the sequel is a free-trade world controlled by international capitalists of enormous wealth with workers paid third-world wages, no benefits, no job security, no protections for the forseeable future.
Great.
Working for a corporation is no longer what is was.
However, there are many opportunities in consulting, contracting, and small business for the able. Since only the least capable workers will work for large corporations, they will require a lot of assistance from smaller enterprises.
Can you Freep Mail it to me?
Curious......Do you have excerpt this article?
Yes we have but not the way the writer has seen it. The US Auto Industry has been singularly brain dead when it comes to competition and dealing with the Labor Unions (Who have also been similarly short sighted and greedy). This movie is a replay of the past auto crises where foreign imports were eating the lunch of Detroit's obsolete designs and poor styling choices only this time it is the Foreign Imports feeding off of Detroit's singular reliance on gas guzzling SUV's and Pickups.
US Management is so wedded to these things to the point of ignoring what has been obvious to many of us, SUV's are passe', at least in the bloated, excessive form Detroit has been producing. The same can be said of their trucks to the extent that they are over-sized, fuel inefficient and do not fit in where the energy and general economic trnds are clearly moving.
This has been obvious to almost everyone except US Auto Management and now the time is here for a forced revamping of the industry. I say give them all (Unions and Monument) what their ignorance deserves. Unfortunately, stockholders and pensioners will be taken along for the ride.
"Since only the least capable workers will work for large corporation"
Sorry, those folks are government employees.
Monument = Management (Damn Spell Checker!)
The Wall Street Journal is "excerpt and link only". The way I understand it is susposed to work here is that excerpts are limited to 300 words, which gives you much more insight and flavor of the article than the 91 words posted. Whether the WSJ limits excerpts to less than 100 words or whether the poster stopped at this point, I don't know.
However, as I offered, I will 'private reply' the entire text for those who ask.
What, pray tell, was so great about smokestack America? It reminds me of those folks at the turn of the century who bemoaned the loss of the "yeoman farmer."
But the masses were workers, members of the proletariat - or unemployed, unproductive louts. It's always been that way and probably always will be that way. I admit there's some small possibility that new technology and social organization will change that...but I can't see any sign of it.
US Management is so wedded to these things to the point of ignoring what has been obvious to many of us, SUV's are passe', at least in the bloated, excessive form Detroit has been producing. The same can be said of their trucks to the extent that they are over-sized, fuel inefficient and do not fit in where the energy and general economic trnds are clearly moving.
Exactly. Even the workers on the line can see this. Management is blind, both to its poor designs & giving in to the UAW.
Last year a plant(GM) in Michigan wasted thousands of dollars giving the UAW members jackets, laptops & cute little mugs. UAW kiss-ups were thrilled & boasted how they twisted GMs arm to get the stuff. Others wanted to know whose jobs were cut to buy the frills. The UAW isn't as "unified" as they would like the country to think.
My kids don't contribute what my wife and I collect from social insecurity, so I guess we're "milking someone elses kids." And for retirees from GM, the stats are worse...
It was better than what came before, better than the days of the "yeoman farmer". Not because being a worker in a factory was better than being a successful farmer - it wasn't - but because relatively few could be successful farmers.
My father and I work in post-Smokestack, service economy America, and we live in great neighborhoods, eat very well, and have everything we need.
You think that's going to continue as globalization progresses? What high-paying skills do you possess that can't be replaced by advancing technology and cheaper foreign labor? And how will your kids afford housing as land prices escalate in response to an exponentially increasing population?
I don't know what the rest of the article said. However, Delphi is and was already a typical international firm. Less than 15% of its employees were in the US. The major part of its manufacturing capacity is off shore in Mexico, SE Asia and Europe. Its plants were the parts plants GM owned until they were spun off as a way to reduce company operating expenses. So if a major US manufacturer already mostly with of shore operations is going bankrupt what is the real cause? The UAW only represents a minority of a minority of Delphi workers.
2. My family went from peasent farmers to factory workers to senior management in three generations. Working in some smelly factory and living in a gritty urban neighborhood was merely a period of transition for many people, not an end in and of itself.
3. The era of "high payin' factory jobs" only lasted from the end of WWII (when the US had a near monopoly on industrial production and management needed to buy labor peace) to the early 1970s. Prior to that, guys like my grandfather got paid bupkiss.
Now that's a great question!
Probably the answer is here
Its plants were the parts plants GM owned..
Delphi's future is tied to GM somehow.
Your Granpa didn't have access to credit. I got my first credit card in the 60's. Prior to that there was the Diner's card which was pretty high falutin'.
Bankcards have changed everything.
I would venture that while everyone eats well and uses nice things, they own very very little everything being mortgaged or creditcarded to the enth degree.
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