My take has been that Ford/GM have been mismanaged, and make an inferior product, compounded with having to compete with non-unionized automakers. Toyota and Honda are doing great, and they make most of the cars sold in the U.S. in the U.S.

Free trade does work in theory. It's just you have to utilize your economic advantages. The problem is that many Americans are not doing so. There is no way in hell we can compete with China when it comes to low skilled manufacturing. They can just do it so much cheaper.

We do however have enormous advantages when it comes to high skilled labor, such as technology. When it comes to bio-tech jobs, or other high skilled jobs, the market is great, workers make good money, and we export more than we import.

With low skilled manufacturing jobs, we have serious problems. Joe Smith cannot possibly compete with Yin Chang in China. Chang does the same job for 1/10th the pay. The solution is for Joe to stay in school longer and gain an advantage that the Chinese cannot compete with. They are currently a less developed country and do not have the means to keep up with us as far as producing high skilled workers.

With free trade, the workers with competitive advantages are going to flourish, and those without will flounder. Which is EXACTLY what we have seen occur under free trade.

If we do not think our citizens can educate themselves and get themselves to have a competitive advantage, then free trade isn't for us I guess, and should replace current taxes with tariffs. I do not think we should aim to be a country of low skilled laborers though.

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Well one could make the arguement that paying for insurance and pensions could be bad management as well.

What about government standards on CAFE? If the government forces the car industry to make cars people arent buying b/c of mileage standards, doesnt that also affect the bottomline? Or paying people not to work and instead sit around? Does that affect the bottomline?



Well why dont we lower business taxes and regs? Why not create the incentive for companies to keep those jobs here? Obviously these companies can find that overseas, otherwise they wouldnt be moving out of the country to do so.

I dont like free trade. Never have. We now have a global economy, which is fine by me. But our companies are going to places where they can make a bigger buck. We need to lower our tax burden and some of our regs, in order to compete. Otherwise, the jobs will keep going overseas.

Think about it. If you owned a business and were getting taxed heavily, if you had the oppurtunity to move it to a place where you could keep more of your profit, wouldnt you take that? I would.

No I dont believe it has. I think what we got is a media and a political party that wants us to think that companies are evil as a whole. Get the government out of the way so that companies will be inspired to stay put.

We should institute a slightly stronger import tariff untill we can fix our trade inbalance. Like u said free trade would be the best if we could export different products of the same value that we import. Even though America has one of the best higher education systems in the world we still aren't producing enough products in high tech industry which we are actualy capable of competing in. Maybe large tax breaks for those companys because the trade inbalance is a huge problem. Without exporting anything to have something behind our currency it is basically worthless.

Toyota and Honda also have a MUCH better record of giving their employees a fair deal. This is something the Japanese have known all along. That if they give their employees an atmosphere and a compensation package that precludes them from looking elsewhere for employment (saving on training) or needing to organize, then their costs will be less in the long run, and the product will be far superior. Contrast that with the American companies where the employees have had to fight tooth and nail for every raise and every benefit that the Japanese companies offer as a standard package, and you can see why the Japanese companies kicked the snot out of the American companies for 2 decades in terms of value; a period from which the Big 3 will likely never recover. Put another way, employees of the Japanese firms were made to feel a valued part of a team; employees of the American companies were made to feel like a necessary evil. Happy employees are productive employees.

The big problem with economic and social theories is that they are intertwined and often cause each other unforeseen consequences. Economists are not sociologists, and vice versa. The skill advantage that the US enjoys is much smaller than it was even ten years ago and is getting smaller. You remember all of those Indians and Pakistanis and Chinese that were in your college courses? Most of them didn't stay in the US. The majority of them are now taking the high-tech knowledge they learned here back to their home country where they are putting their EE degree, their CivE or their ChemE degree into practice or teaching those courses at their local university. There is still an advantage of skill in the US. But that advantage is getting smaller over time, and the result is not that the rest of the world will come up to our wage level but the US will by necessity have to slow wage growth to compete in the current unfettered environment.

That is why a candidate's stand on education is so important. That's why I believe in universal higher education and universal trade education. I think the European model is a good jumping off point. It has it's drawbacks, but the idea that anyone, regardless of station in life is at least guaranteed a college degree or a trade skill makes sense from a national investment standpoint. The dividends of a highly educated populace pay off in more ways than can be predicted; from reduced need for government aid to better access to health care to having more disposable income to pump into the economy. What makes more sense: leaving a majority of financially disadvantaged people stuck in underpaying jobs because they couldn't afford to get the education they need to compete, or to invest in education so that those people have the opportunity to earn a higher salary and thus be able to contribute more to the economy, while at the same time taking away less?

Again, it goes back to education. How many people, when given the educational opportunities, would take full advantage of those competitive advantages? Certainly some would screw off and not do what they needed to do, but the majority of them would take advantage of it and do well.

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Tax & Spend > Borrow & Spend

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Every feeling you've ever felt can be found in the works of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler, and Wagner.

Mmmm...not so much. You have to have those things in place in order to compete for the best employees. You also have to have them to keep your current employees happy and not looking for greener pastures. As I stated above; a happy employee is a productive employee.

People have not been worrying about mileage because the cost of gas has been relatively cheap. Not as true now as it was even two or three years ago. Add to that the increasing focus on the premise that cars are a big contributor to global warming (whether you believe that yourself is beside the point - we're talking about public perception), and you have a situation where, I believe, the government is actually ahead of the curve for a change. I am certain that consumer attitudes are in flux regarding this issue right now. I think that people [would like to have vehicles that are cheaper to operate and less polluting, but in their absence, they will buy what works best for them in terms of needs. Personally, I drive a mid-sized SUV, a Grand Cherokee. I drive it out of necessity for the things that do in my daily activities. It gets about 15 mpg in the city. I wish to high Heavens that I had an affordable alternative that got twice the mpg. But none is currently available to me, so I do what I need to do. I don't think that I'm alone in that line of thinking.

The car makers claim that raising the CAFE standards would drastically increase the cost of the cars. I think that's their way of pre-justifying making more profits when the CAFE standards hit. I don't see how off-the-shelf technologies can significantly increase costs. I think it's just spin they are applying to the conversation because making the changes would cost them in the short term, and American companies (and investors, for that matter) are notorious for not being able to see past the current quarterly earnings report. The Big 3 have the opportunity to give us something that the Japanese manufacturers haven't: a high-mpg SUV with comparable performance and a competitive sticker price. The first one to that line gets a prize in the form of a sales increase like they don't seem to able to imagine.

I would be all for that. In fact, I wouldn't stop there. I would like to see dis-incentives for moving jobs out of the US via the tax structure, and see also tighter regulations pertaining to how companies can claim offshore profits and losses.

Again, I think a reasonable combination of incentives and dis-incentives are the way to go. The government's role has to be that of a) protecting American jobs, b) protecting the environment, and c) enforcing equal trade: NOT free trade.

But the fact is, not many companies are showing inspiration to do anything but make money, no matter the consequences. Until that changes, companies are going to maintain their evil image, and justifiably so. Exxon is a prime example. It doesn't matter what they do in terms of positive environmental action, the fact is their negligence polluted an entire ecosystem at Prince William Sound. Until they own up to their obligations, both legal and ethical, no amount of positive environmental action is going to do them any good regarding their public image. Companies will have to make their positive actions concrete, not just lip-service, and not doing two positive things here and 20 negative things there and expecting people to accept that. That concept applies as equally to trade and jobs as it does environmental issues.

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Tax & Spend > Borrow & Spend

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Every feeling you've ever felt can be found in the works of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler, and Wagner.