Here is the article and my rebuttal.

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

03/10/2009 08:18:02 PM · #1

//www.reuters.com/article/markeâ�¦54054020090310

My statement.

Message edited by author 2009-03-10 20:53:11.

Nikon D200

03/10/2009 09:44:20 PM · #2

Bump for excellent writing. :)

Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS

03/10/2009 10:10:54 PM · #3

That was kind of you. I just went off for a minute. My favorite part is:

"Speaking of the internet it will be consolidated into 4-6 sites as regulated by the FCC. Those sites will be //NBC.com,//CBS.com, //ABC.com, and //PBS.com. They will eventually shorten the names under the new ADA laws. The shortened site names will be 4,6,7,9. These sites will remain free, but there will be 30 minutes of adds for every 15 minutes of internet."

I crack myself up when I read that. I am a weirdo.

PapaBob

Sony Alpha a7 IV

03/10/2009 11:00:33 PM · #4

Tax on my tennis shoes, tell me it isn't true......

03/12/2009 09:34:33 AM · #5

Entertaining read, thanks!

03/12/2009 11:10:35 AM · #6

I just find it crazy that we decided that companies should be owned by the government. I think that the post office should be privatized, and now we are going in the opposite direction...:(

03/12/2009 11:21:51 AM · #7

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

I just find it crazy that we decided that companies should be owned by the government. I think that the post office should be privatized, and now we are going in the opposite direction...:(

Agreed. Who in their right mind thinks the govt can run GM? Granted, GM has not done a stellar job, but our govt building cars and making a profit? Most people in our govt now think profits are evil!

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

03/12/2009 03:38:57 PM · #8

I am pretty sure that government owned businesses was one of the main things the founding fathers were trying to get away from. And here we are just going right back to it. Stupid.

Judith Polakoff

Nikon D7000

03/12/2009 04:31:13 PM · #9

Well, you've thought about the consequences of nationalizing certain industries (although nationalization in this case is intended to be only temporary). But have you thought about what the consequences would be of allowing the banks and mega-insurance companies and car companies to fail? I'm just curious what you project would happen to the American economy, and the world economy, if all the troubled businesses that we know about thus far were allowed to go under?

scarbrd

Leica M10

Leica 35mm f/1.4 Summilux M Aspherical MF - Black

03/12/2009 05:04:18 PM · #10

All this talk about letting GM, Citi and others fail and let the market do its thing is all fine a good on paper.

When you realize that the jobs lost, however temporary, are realy people with real families that have house notes and bills due now is when it gets a little hard to handle. Closing down GM and Citi would leaves 1000s and 1000s of people jobless in the short term (short term = 1 - 2 years).

Telling these folks "That just the way it works" probably won't get a lot of support from them, no matter how "free market" they think they are.

Azrifel

Fujifilm X100VI

03/12/2009 06:08:47 PM · #11

On paper all systems are ideal. It's just the people that fail. Time and time again.

03/12/2009 07:25:43 PM · #12

Originally posted by scarbrd:

But by not letting it self correct you will set your self up for a future of worse poverty than you will have now. How about dumping that 1 trillion into making sure that these people don't go hungry and let GM fold. A new car company will spring up in the matter of months and hire them back. Heck I would take a stab at that business plan. You are talking about starting a business where the demand is already there. Also if you think about it cars are still going to be sold, and other car companies will be making more cars to fill the void, so in the mid term you will have tons of new jobs with companies like Toyota, and Honda. The impact is less if you deal with it now. Let the government run a businesses is what causes revolutions. It is also Socialism by definition.

03/12/2009 08:53:46 PM · #13

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

I agree with some of your points but I can't agree with

"A new car company will spring up in the matter of months and hire them back"

"the demand is already there"

No other company is going to spring up into a market that has all the major players struggling to survive and in todayâ��s economic crises I haven't seen any evidence that the demand for motor vehicles is strong.

Part of the reason GM was in this situation was the fact that the cars they were making were high fuel consuming which are not suited for todayâ��s needs.

In my opinion when the dust settles the US will lose at least one possible two large car manufactures and a new car manufacture will emerge but they will not be US based they come from China.

The sleeping dragon has awoken; China will become the next industrial giant and have already plans for massive car manufacture. They will export vehicles at such low-price that the Western world will not be able to compete, similar to the clothing industry now.

In about 5 years time I will gladly come back and bump this thread so my nostradamus skills will be shared by all.:)

03/12/2009 09:22:54 PM · #14

GM still sells cars. There is a demand for x number of cars in the current market. That demand would be filled by a combination of new and other car companies. Those car companies would have to staff up.

This is just common sense economics. Maybe 100% of the jobs would not be filled, but guess what? The market will not support that many jobs right now. We shouldn't prop it up with government money. That is like sticking life rafts under the titanic so you can get 3 seconds more before it goes under. What good would that do anybody?

It is clear to me that GM can't get with the program. While Honda was bringing the "Fit" to the US, GM was trying to make an SUV get 20MPG. That is why they should die. They failed to deliver what they needed to. Why did the other car companies make it? They downsized staff, downsized cars and changed with the demand. GM did not. Why should we make them a government owned company now? That doesn't even make sense.

I would build a new car company tomorrow if GM went out of business. They made a ton of cars every year. Somebody will make that profitable, and somebody will have to make those cars.

Robots are going to make it hard on the auto workers anyway (they already have). Soon those jobs that we are trying to save will be gone anyway. Life is hard, I lost my business and all my money to companies going bankrupt and not paying me. I live in a 800sq ft basement with my wife and 2 children and am scraping by every week. I DO NOT WANT A BAILOUT! I will eventually find my groove in a new industry and will carry on. The last thing I want is the government to screw with any aspect of my life. If people want hand outs then they need to find themselves a nice place that can afford to give them things for free.

If I own a doughnut shop that employees 3000 people and all of the sudden there is a tax on doughnut glaze that raises the cost per doughnut to $65 I will have to downsize my company to meet the new demand at that price, or I will have to come out with a doughnut that taste good with no glaze. That is how it should be and that is how it has always worked.

03/12/2009 09:45:37 PM · #15

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

Is GM making a profit? In previous years No

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

This is just common sense economics. Maybe 100% of the jobs would not be filled, but guess what? The market will not support that many jobs right now. We shouldn't prop it up with government money. That is like sticking life rafts under the titanic so you can get 3 seconds more before it goes under. What good would that do anybody?

I agree that it is mistake to prop up GM

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

It is clear to me that GM can't get with the program. While Honda was bringing the "Fit" to the US, GM was trying to make an SUV get 20MPG. That is why they should die. They failed to deliver what they needed to. Why did the other car companies make it? They downsized staff, downsized cars and changed with the demand. GM did not. Why should we make them a government owned company now? That doesn't even make sense.

I'm not sure the other manufactures have made it yet.

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

I would build a new car company tomorrow if GM went out of business. They made a ton of cars every year. Somebody will make that profitable, and somebody will have to make those cars.

The demand is diminishing and with this recession that will only make the demand decrease. GM was not the only car manufacture to ask the Government for money. The profit margin for all has declined.

Like I said previous I agree with most of what you are saying but some of your statements are a little irrational and without any sound reasoning.

03/12/2009 10:58:03 PM · #16

GM is not making a profit because they can't sell enough cars right? Time to shrink the company or get out of business. That is what Toyota did by cutting back, Honda on the other hand made cars that were in demand and sold 13% more last year. Seems clear that the problem is that GM is a sucky company. Bailing out GM doesn't help anything. It is like a band-aide on 12" gash in your stomach.

If the government wants to help GM out really, then raise demand and fix the car crisis by doing this: Let oil companies drill for oil in America and make gas cheaper. That would fix GM's problem and would cost the tax payers $0.00 trillion in bailout money. Demand for GM cars would sore with low fuel costs, and they could build the Hummer 9000 with 12 cylinder motor getting 0mpg. Don't think that GM will be fixed by throwing money at it. They can't compete with other car companies. They make bad decisions time and time again.

At one point we made the horse buggy. Then market changes caused the demand for it fall. When that happened the horse and buggy companies were not bailed out so they could maintain their current staffing levels as a way to keep the economy running. They died or moved into other things that were making money. We will not be driving cars forever, and at some point we have to face facts that all products and corporations have a life cycle. They are born, they grow and they die or change to something else.

GM is not making a profit because they can't sell enough cars. Time to shrink the company or get out of business.

03/13/2009 12:58:22 AM · #17

Originally posted by Jason_Cross:

Jason I don't think you are reading what I'm saying!! I agree with you that the Government should not prop up GM

Where I don't agree with you is in these statements:

"A new car company will spring up in the matter of months and hire them back"

"the demand is already there"

It is not only the GM company but the whole industry that is shrinking and for that matter the whole global economy. What is far worse is that the car industry has a lot more retraction to happen yet so the thought that another car manufacture would simply pop up and survive in this economic climate is not reasonable.

I think your views on the oil situation could be best described as simplistic and must be tongue in cheek.Oil is a global commodity and has many variables in the price setting.

03/13/2009 01:23:30 AM · #18

Back to the horse carriage. Eventually that demand fell and those people no longer make horse carriages. So as demand falls now people will lose their jobs. Increase demand, or decrease supply is your only choice.

There is still a demand of X number of cars. And the car companies have to take their share of that X figure. If that X figure drops by 30 percent then a couple companies are going to go belly up. It might be simple, but it is the basic principal of our system. Tax payers should not support business. The free market system should support business.

Oil is complicated, but if push came to shove we can lower the cost of oil by increasing the supply. We have oil, we don't drill it. North America is not "oil poor". The US gets most of its oil from Canada and Mexico. You think that for some reason right smack dab in the middle there is no oil? We choose to consume rather than produce, but if we needed we could have a profound impact on the worlds supply of oil. Will we do that? No, but it would be a better fix than trying to spend everybody's money at a company so that the government can own it.

Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di for Canon

03/13/2009 01:55:30 AM · #19

Jason for the third or fourth time ...I agree regarding the government bail-out

But this statement is just so wrong I can't let it go

"A new car company will spring up in the matter of months and hire them back"

You seem hell-bent on argueing with yourself so I think I will just say:

I give up :)

BrennanOB

Canon EOS-1D Mark II

03/13/2009 02:28:09 AM · #20

Your notion that there is, was or ever has been a "free market system" is naive as the idea that we can drill our way out of our dependence on imported oil. It is a diminishing resource that is in increased demand as China and India bring themselves closer to competing with us.

Our top 4 suppliers of oil are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Venezuela. Most of these fields were opened after the American fields began producing less, so the oil companies began looking further afield to get the product our economy works on. World wide supplies are being outstripped by demand and if you think that unfettered oil development is the answer, you are neglecting the offsetting costs. High cost extraction of coal tar sands works pretty well in the Canadian tundra, less well on productive farm land, or next door to a housing tract. Coastal drilling in the red sea is worth the trade off because the have no fishing industry to destroy in a spill.

Our "free market system" is held up by a complex set of international accords and trade agreements abroad, and a thick net of consumer protections that make things like lead free paint and building codes so much a part of the warp and weft of our culture that we don't even see them as a benefit of government oversight anymore.

This morning on the news they reported on how the auto unions were negotiating away agreements that have been putting the American auto industry at a disadvantage in competing with foriegn makers producing here in the US ( BMW ,Subaru, Toyota ect) and abroad. Furthermore executive pay has been revised.These are good signs. Remember that Crysler was saved by loan guarantees in 1979 by the feds and what a stink was made over that?

Had Fox News existed then with its amazing ability to fight anything that smells of socialism, it might have been allowed to die then. Thank god they weren't around when "we the people" came up with the notion of a Federal Reserve bank, a standing army, municipal fire fighting departments, or free public education. I for one am glad for such government interference in a free market.

03/13/2009 11:12:42 AM · #21

Yes, a new car company probably will not pop up after GM folds. The market sucks right now, not a good idea.

However, all the other car companies will sell a lot more cars. Jason is right that the demand will stay constant. GM sells more cars then anyone so their absence will leave a huge hole in supply. If Ford and Chrysler are smart they are working on a plan to capture that market share as I type.