Wednesday, November 7, 2007

General Motors Loses $39 Billion

I believe I have ranted about this before. GM and Ford and a lot of other American companies need to be completely restructured or allowed to die a quick and painless death if we want to continue having manufacturing in this country for anything.

Anectodal evidence suggests:
  • Most executives are overpaid (at least based on the results they produce)
  • Most companies are strapped with labor deals that leave them unable to make quick changes or innovate in any areas
  • Detroit has no clue what the markets want and are always five years behind in trends
  • Government will bend over backwards to subsidize these dinosaurs with unfair tax breaks and tax money (corporate welfare) which only keeps them alive to get more subsidies instead of actually forcing them to change
  • At the same time, government will step in to over-regulate these businesses to the point that they can't produce anything at a competitive price

As a simple moral point, it is time to end the subsidies (and some of the regulations while we're at it) and let these companies either adapt on their own or die.

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