Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
50,000,000 at 1000 each just pays off the principle Jammer.
Another 20,000,000 to pay the interest.
Anyone want to loan me 50 billion for 15 years without any interest?
I would build a car that would really change the game forever.
Chrysler was bailed out in the mid 80s to the tune of 1.5 billion.
They paid the load off with interest in a few years.
Lee Iacocca ran the company and they came out with the K car and the Mini
Van.
About a decade later Mercedes paid 38 billion for Chrysler and loss their butts when they sold a large part of their stock.
If you think the retirees lost a lot of money in GM's bankruptcy Jammer, you should look at what the shareholders lost.
Much of that stock was held by retirement funds.
What did they get?
Squat.
You must remember the song that went;
Tax the rich, feed the poor, until there are no rich no more.
We like to hate the rich, but in doing so we also hurt those who did all the right things only to see their financial security vanish.
Many retirement funds lost 70% of their assets in the market tumble from a high of 14k to the low of just over 6300.
We like to trash the oil companies, but you should really look at who owns the oil companies.
For every dollar the oil companies earned (ie worked for) the govt got 4 dollars out of gasoline and corporate taxes, and they didn't even pay the oil companies to collect that tax.
The Boston Tea Party was fought over a tax of 3%. When I was working at my shop, if I made more than $25k a year I paid 49.5% Federal, State and Social Security.
That doesn't include property taxes, local sales taxes, car registration taxes, or the meals tax at restaurants here that is over 10%, or any other of the numerous taxes that I can't even remember, like taxes on your utility bills, cable tv, and even the tax you pay on your internet connection.
Even at that exorbitant rate the govt still couldn't balance their checkbook., so they spent the taxes they had not collected.
If you or I did that we would be in jail.
regards
Mech
PS:
That same 50 billion invested in making cars more efficient would have solved the efficiency problem altogether. People would be lining up at the dealerships to buy cars that got at least twice your 45 MPG, and the American auto industry would be opening factories and hiring hundreds of thousands of people to keep up with demand.
We would stop bleeding between 200 and 600 billion dollars to the oil cartel and that same money would be in this country promoting economic growth and creating millions of real jobs.
My first attempt to contact a manufacturer was with GM. They chose to ignore any input. In doing so they dug their own grave.
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You make valid points Mech, but lets not forget the autoworkers are/wear taxpayers and in many cases shareholders too. My father lost a lot when he had to sell GM. He kept looking at the technical side of the stock graph and thinking that what fell down had to go back up and he lost a lot of $$. So please, lets not forget all of the taxes the UAW members have paid in and their lost GM stock, or even bond, investments as well as losing a large share of their pensions and deep cuts in promised medical (I know it's not everyone's responsibility to give the retirees what the company gave away in CEO bonuses, but they got even a worse deal after putting 30 years in). And if there was not a so called bailout, how much do you want to bet they would of ended up on the Government fixed payrolls in one way or the other anyway.
It's just a bad deal for everyone, but I will not blame the union workers for doing what they were told to do only to find out after 30 years the company was so mis-managed they could hardly afford a haircut. The blame falls at the top, not the bottom. The UAW has been broken, their just a token now.