Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Why is it always about stock prices?

 

No.

We are invested in people's ability to have jobs, the ability to produce products on our own soil and what our environment will look like in 50, 100 or 150 years from now.

We have always been invested in GM.


Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_General_Motors_build_trucks_for_world_war_2#ixzz27y9QAQAW

General Motors converted all of its production to the Allied war effort and delivered more than $12 billion worth of goods, ranging from airplanes to tanks, marine diesel engines, trucks, machine guns, and shells. No other manufacturer delivered as much material to the Allied forces.

Here is a list of the WWII General Motors War Material Production 1940-45: (This is the best list I could assemble from the contemporary sources at war's end)
198,000 Diesel engines for tanks & landing craft
206,000 Airplane engines
13,000 Complete bombers and fighter planes
97,000 Aircraft propellors
301,000 Aircraft gyroscopes
38,000 Tanks, tank destroyers and armored vehicles
854,000 Trucks, including amhibious DUKWs
190,000 Cannons
1,900,000 Machine guns and submachine guns
3,142,000 Carbines
3,826,000 Electric motors
11,111,000 Fuses
360,000,000 Ball and roller bearings
119,562,000 Shells
39,181,000 Cartridge cases
540,619,000 Grand Total

 

O.K. say we let GM fail like all the libertarian message board heroes wanted to. National debt is much less, hooray!!! Cue the flags, anthem and fireworks...USA! USA! Rugged individualism baby!!

THEN WHAT? Do we just cover our eyes and ears and pretend that the millions left unemployed by such a decision just get magically retrained and pick up full employment in a few months/years time? Since we told the company to drop dead, isn't it suffice to say that we would do the same when the state of Michigan (and perhaps others) would come begging for federal assistance in the advent of dropping an economic nuclear bomb on them? Isn't it also safe to say that if GM, Chrysler and Ford (oh they would have been toast too if there was no bailout) went away and those jobs went away that a vast sum of income tax revenues would also disappear? National Debt Warriors, how would you address that problem?

 

I would argue no. You can't meaningfully compare economies decades apart. Not with the speed the world has changed in the last 200 years.

 

You don't.

Because millions unemployed today is better than 10s of millions tomorrow when the debt is due.

"What is your solution!?!?!?!?! If you don't have one, we have to do our solution!!" begs the question. It assumes there is a solution. Sometimes it's better to stop trying to keep all the plates spinning and just prepare to pick up the pieces.

 

That's talking purely from an economic perspective. I'm not saying you don't try to help the unemployed. You do. But you do it for social reasons, because it *will* hurt the economy.

 

I can't speak on whether the Volt is a failure but I rented a 2013 Chevy Sonic for a 1-day trip this weekend. Horrendous car. 2,500 miles on the odometer and it had a) no power and b) didn't even get 30 mpg.

That's quite a combination -- a car with unappealing curb appeal, an engine that felt it would destruct at 70 mph and it didn't sip gas. Slow clap, GM! Well done!

 

Flat tax.
17% across the board.
Take away all deductions.

I'm cool with it.

 

I'm also going to look at the poster and remember that they probably have no concept that a country's strength is not found on a market floor. It's found in the the things it produces within its borders. The less you produce, the less value you have to the rest of the world.

So nuking two major motor companies, to me, is not the way to strengthen a country.

 

Broken window fallacy. If you are producing things nobody wants to buy, then you aren't really gaining anything by producing it.

The money to "not nuke" those two companies had to come from other places, and is no longer used to make other stuff as a result.