Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

First of all, you didn't use "Ragu's logic." In fact, that was a typical ILLOGICAL 93devil post.

Yup. The Chevy Volt is comparable to the iPhone. 93Devil, ladies and gentlemen.

1) They sold 20,000 Chevy Volts this year, and only sold that many by subsidizing them and going through a three-month push around the election to try to make it look successful through giveaway leases at huge losses. You just compared 20,000 of something being sold at a loss to 1.4 million of something that was immensely profitable. Even given the price difference between a car and a phone it is a silly comparison without a point.

2) The iPhone wasn't introduced until half way through 2007. So it's 1.4 million sold in half a year in its first year. In its first year, the Chevy Volt couldn't catch fleas. By any measure the iPhone was an immediate success, and it was based on consumer demand. My point through this thread. There has been little consumer demand for the Chevy Volt, obvious after two years, even with heavy subsidies at the cost of our national debt -- something Apple didn't have to do, because they produced something people wanted.

3) Most obviously, we're not talking about Apple. Why not compare this to the Betamax? Why not compare it to Ava Gabor's tits, actually? They have nothing to do with each other, and if you wanted to try to make any point in favor of the Volt not having caught on yet, you wouldn't pick one of the most successful companies and products to compare a failure to. You make the comparison to the iPhone AFTER they have sold a gazillion Chevy Volts. Until then, you just compared Apples to Volts, which makes no point whatsoever -- except that Apple has sold a lot of products that people have gobbled up, and GM has not been able to do that thus far with their overpriced electric car that makes little sense to most people.

 

A123 would have been a brilliant investment. Even with a massive government handout--that we all pay for with national debt now--they have managed to fuck everyone who came close to them. The bs. overblown promises of what they were going to should have us making comparisons to Steve Jobs, too!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/business/battery-maker-a123-systems-files-for-bankruptcy.html?_r=0

Sadly, that is not the only similar story from the corruption behind all of this. There was Ener1, too.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-08/ener1-battery-maker-seeks-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection.html

If there is a market for electric vehicles or the batteries that run them, we certainly didn't need corrupt politicians stoking it by running up debt and giving it to their cronies who have bought them off. There is actually a burgeoning MARKET (what an idea!) for those technologies, and if there is anything that meets actual demand, it will flourish. That hasn't happened yet. The way the technology is developing -- and this has been long in the offing -- it isn't likely to happen anytime soon. As much as people wish for it.

 

I keep saying it because we have run up $16 trillion dollars in debt. Our government is now $4 trillion large and we run a deficit of greater than a trillion dollars a year, as we keep adding to that debt. $16 trillion is greater than our gross domestic product. It's not how I think it works. It's the reality that we have created a huge mess and people don't understand that you can't just keep putting off paying for it, while corrupt politicians keep spending on a credit card that really DOES have a limit. At a certain point if we keep going mindlessly the way we are, we will not be able to service the debt, and there is nothing different about us in that regard from Greece or Spain.

It ends in one of many ways; likely a combination of bad things for all of us. A default on our debt, if we are blatantly stupid and just keep our heads in the sand, while the bags of money get thrown around cu. A broad-based tax hike that hits us all and reams our economy worse than the debt anchor already is. Or that, combined with the Federal Reserve devaluing our currency to try to inflate away the debt, reducing our standard of living the process.

We are already seeing the last -- the Fed running up trillions on its balance sheet as it destroys the dollar. It's the hidden tax, and that way politicians don't have to answer for it. But it also has been feckless because they have tried that game to a grotesque extreme, so at the same time we are putting THAT anchor on our economy, our debt burden is still growing larger. And our purchasing power has been reduced by a ton.

One way or another, yes, it ends with us paying for it massively. And we basically will be paying to the bone for money that has been largely pissed away. The fact that people don't get that, and even cheer it on, makes me sad.

 

So essentially you feel secure because you believe that the there is an inherent love affair with dollars that makes it so the rest of the world is willing to live by one set of rules, while we get to live large and rule over them like a king.

That is one way to justify a debt load and debasing monetary "policy" that has actually made our treasuries -- long the safest, safe haven in the world -- something others don't feel as safe about.

The "We're American! We can run up debt beyond dangerous levels, because 'We're American' and America is special" texbooks have it wrong. There is a limit. We have come way too close to that limit. It's shameful. And made worse by the fact that the vast majority of us are not even getting to have a good party with the money (not that I advocate that -- but $16 trillion of debt, most of which has been pissed away and hurt our economy is a formula for stupidity).

 

Why would it be kicking itself in the nuts? We have devalued the dollar to nothing. The only reason it was the world's reserve currency was because of its strength. We have shit all over that strength. Why wouldn't the rest of the world abandon it -- something that has been increasingly talked about by other countries, most notably China, in the last few years, and which actually started to become a reality this year:

http://www.wyattresearch.com/article/the-end-of-the-dollar-has-already-begun/28044

This was a huge development that got little attention. In terms of scope, it didn't sound the death knell for the dollar, but in terms of significance, it signaled that we are not special just because we are the U.S. of A. We don't have a god-given right to be THE reserve currency, and if we shit all over that currency, it takes pure arrogance to say "the rest of the world is kicking itself in the nuts if it doesn't kiss our ass." We have abused the blank check we had by devaluing the dollar in order to try to inflate away massive debt created by our politicians. We know. The rest of the world knows it. Within a decade, as our influence continues to decline with globalization, the dollar likely won't hold any special status.