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Post by Dave's Not Here Man on Nov 26, 2018 12:39:23 GMT -5
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Post by bobathon on Nov 26, 2018 13:04:42 GMT -5
Winning.
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Post by sipowitz86 on Nov 26, 2018 13:34:01 GMT -5
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Post by minx on Nov 26, 2018 14:36:55 GMT -5
We just have to wait for those tariffs to work....
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Post by k9krap on Nov 26, 2018 17:55:17 GMT -5
I think they are.
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Post by Dave's Not Here Man on Nov 27, 2018 9:46:33 GMT -5
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Post by minx on Nov 27, 2018 13:41:42 GMT -5
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Post by rally2xs on Dec 3, 2018 14:02:22 GMT -5
GM CEO is getting beaten up by both houses of Congress today, supposedly. Hard to tell, my favorite news channel is the GHWB death continuously, and I watched MSNBC yesterday on the elliptical and it was 10 minutes of GHWB and the other 50 minutes filled with lies designed to damage the President. Hard to get some real news, but I heard that somewhere - she's being grilled by Congress, either today or this week. This may yet not stand. We'll see.
Of course, if the federal gov't would get the F out of the business of designing cars, and let them just do what they want as long as it meets certain pollution standards, then Detroit, I'm sure, could design cars that would sell. But as long as the CAFE standards dictate rollerskate cars such as we have now, they're not going to sell. People will instead buy SUVs. Read yesterday that 65% of vehicle sales were SUV's and trucks. Funny how that works. This ain't Europe, where they get in a car and get out 2 - 3 hours later and they're destinated. This is America, where we sometimes get into cars and drive 14 hours a day for 3 days straight to get where we want to go, and we don't want to do it in some tiny, bouncy little acorn of a car. We buy big cars, and if we can't get 'em, we buy SUV's and Trucks. So, GM & Ford both are going to mostly make SUV's and Trucks. Again, funny how that works.
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Post by bobathon on Dec 3, 2018 14:49:51 GMT -5
How can you (you specifically, not the generic you) tell a lie from the truth? Lies are all the statements you don't like, right? Because veracity clearly has no impact on what you think lies are.
From that, the rest of your tl:dr shit is tl:dr. American ingenuity had no problem with the CAFE standards. American greed did. Maybe you should wonder why they bother shifting production lines if they only save $5B. Because they had no issue spending double that for stock buybacks (that goes directly to the worker, right?).
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Post by minx on Dec 3, 2018 14:53:08 GMT -5
Americans are very-shortsighted people. People in other countries drive smaller vehicles because gas costs tons o bucks, mainly because their governments don't subsidize oil companies. We subsidize oil companies to the tune of roughly 15 billion a year. OTOH, we don't really subsidize car manufacturers (there are subsidies for electric cars though)
So, by your own answer Rally, the government should get the hell out of GMs face and let them close any plant they wish and layoff those workers. Small cars aren't selling because gas is cheap. When the price of gas goes up, so does the demand for small cars. Your boy ran on a promise that he could actually control the market, and its forces. It would be nice if he had the balls to explain basic economics to his followers, but he hasn't told the truth yet, so why start now?
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Post by rally2xs on Dec 3, 2018 16:04:14 GMT -5
Americans are very-shortsighted people. People in other countries drive smaller vehicles because gas costs tons o bucks, mainly because their governments don't subsidize oil companies. No, its because the furriners tax the holy hell out of gasoline. They have to have all that money anyway to pay for their inferior but horribly expensive public healthcare systems. The streets of Paris are burning right now because of riots caused by the French tax revolt. Gooo... French citizens. The gov't has no right... I'm skeptical - where is the budget line item for subsidizing auto companies? Are they really giving them money, or simply agreeing not to steal from them by giving them income tax breaks. If the latter, that's not a subsidy, its agreeing not to steal. All income taxes should be repealed on moral grounds alone, since stealing is stealing, stealing is wrong, and no it doesn't make a difference that its the gov't doing it. There are other ways to tax without stealing. If the gov't would get the hell out of the way with its unnecessary regulations, CAFE being #1 on the list at this particular moment, no factories would be on the block to be closed. If the gov't quit taxing companies entirely, and especially repealed all the income taxes of all kinds, we'd have the entire world't manufacturers beating down the doors to come here and manufacture here. There would be no problem getting jobs, there would be open jobs for people without college educations up the wazoo, and we'd probably be able to quit worrying about the depredations of at least the immigrants that come here without a college education, since they would be able to get good jobs too in factories, and not be a burden to society. Illegals, on the other hand, are people who will break our laws to get what they want, and therefore can be expected to continue breaking laws once they get here, so we would still want to keep them from gaining access illegally, as they are nobody you want moving into your neighborhood. But America would be far better off without income taxes.
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Post by minx on Dec 3, 2018 18:37:48 GMT -5
The government just passed a huge tax bill giving corporations major tax breaks in addition to any they had before. This is in addition to the subsidies and tax breaks that states give these companies. Doesn't look like that did much, did it?
And thanks to all those pesky regulations, we have cleaner air, and cars are safer and get more gas mileage than ever before. I seem to recall that back in the 70s when the government asked for better mileage, all the automakers whined and said it couldn't be done. Amazing what you can do when you're forced to, isn't it?
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Post by Dave's Not Here Man on Dec 3, 2018 18:45:42 GMT -5
Remember when they whined about seat belts?
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Post by bobathon on Dec 3, 2018 18:57:15 GMT -5
Alla that and airbags is due solely to public demand! You're just keeping The Man down!
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Post by rally2xs on Dec 3, 2018 21:04:02 GMT -5
The government just passed a huge tax bill giving corporations major tax breaks in addition to any they had before. This is in addition to the subsidies and tax breaks that states give these companies. Doesn't look like that did much, did it? It does to me. All time low unemploymeent rate. All time low black unemployment rate. All time low Hispanic unemployment rate. Etc. Doesn't help a bit when people won't buy 'em, and then buy the cars they want which aren't cars but SUV's and trucks. The Ford Edge ST I have on order is 4400 lbs. No, THAT doesn't make me happy, but the 335 HP / 385 Ft-lbs of torque to an AWD power train with 8 speed automatic transmission does. Sure, go ahead and build the little acorn cars, that sit on the car lots and get discounted below the cost of manufacture so that nobody makes any money on 'em, and it ensures that the companies don't want to make any more of them, lest they go bankrupt and can't make any more cars, trucks, SUV's or anything. Just goes to show you can't legislate absolutely everything - you can't force people to buy stuff, you can just incentivize them one way or the other. The 55 mpg nonsense of the previous CAFE rule was blessedly rescinded, but the damage was done, the cars are engineered to do it, and they're too light and small for America's tastes. So, they didn't sell. So, Ford and GM announced their exit from most of their "car" manufacturing in favor of SUV's and Trucks. It COULDN'T be done BACK THEN. The auto makers spent egregious amounts of money to figure out how to do it, money that caused the styling to go out the window which gave us an array of boxy-looking cars in the late 70s and early 80's, and those didn't sell all that well either. Plus, all the pollution controls severely affected performance, and made the cars undesirable to buy or own, and so they didn't sell all that well either. Foreigners, with long histories of making fuel-efficient cars had an upper hand for small cars, while American manufacturers were masters of the big cars. When manufacturing big cars became hard or impossible, American manufacturing suffered. Its still suffering, and its still the gov't's fault. Again, get the gov't the F out of designing cars, and we can maybe make some progress.
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Post by bobathon on Dec 4, 2018 4:03:43 GMT -5
If you are dead tomorrow, you can't spend all that sweet, beautiful, loving money. It's exactly as if you're stupid.
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