Yeah, how apocalyptic you think the closure of the US automakers will be is directly proportional to how close you live to Detroit.
I agree that America has a long-term economic and military interest in maintaining a manufacturing base, and I’ve been rolling my eyes for years at the free-market fanatics who think efficient markets trump any other national interest (and who likewise turn a blind to protectionist policies in Europe and Asia). Still, what’s the reasonable alternative? Keep paying billions of dollars to companies to produce expensive crap that nobody wants or can afford? How does that make sense.
Anyway, I hate cars. The only car I’ve ever owned was when I pizza delivery driver, and I never want to live anywhere that requires owning a car. That said, I’m for domestic manufacturing. I certainly don’t want more American companies to close and more Americans to lose their jobs. I’d just like to hear what the alternative is to forcing a painful but necessary restructuring. Infinite free money for inefficient companies?
In all seriousness, shame on you FineHam for writing two posts in a row that start with “are you all really dumb enough…?” Not even the caustic dickheads in QT3 P&R will make two rude posts back to back like that.
They work better with some time between them anyway.
FineHam, stop posting. You come in here with guns blazing convinced Mordrak is your enemy. He is not. Take a deep breath, re-read his posts, and try to understand his points. You are jumping to way too many conclusions about people and their positions on this topic.
Dude, you should really lurk moar. I’m one of most lefty-help-people-in-need-types here. My personal opinion isn’t just to say “Fuck you” to the auto industry and tell them to go home. It’s just you. So fuck you and go home.
Governor Granholm responds to some questions on The Today Show this morning:
I was, up until recently, watching The Today Show every morning. I finally got sick of how hostile they always were toward Detroit and the auto companies and just went back to the local news. It’s possible that I’m extra sensitive, but to me, whenever the topic came up, whether it was Lauer or Viera, the tone always was hostile toward any government help to sustain the auto industry. Anyway, I think Governor Granholm does a nice job responding to Lauer.
Edit: Man, calling each other names and casting aspersions on each others intelligence certainly isn’t helping anything.
I don’t think it’s throwing good money after bad. I think it’s about sustaining valuable American companies through the worst economic crisis in decades. This too shall pass, but losing 3 million plus jobs, plus tax revenue, etc. isn’t going to speed along the recovery.
NBC actually, which is one of the reasons the hostility strikes me given their openly democratic bend during the Presidential election. And that’s coming from a Democrat. Of course so is the forced resignation of Rick Wagoner, so who knows what’s going on anymore?
I responded with that because Mordrak asked the same question in his posts, acting like anyone with an opposing position was an idiot. Sorry, but that sort of ignorance deserves the same in kind. He gets it, then immediately starts whining and throwing around insults like he wasn’t the one asking how stupid people could be to dare to disagree with him.
Funniest part of all of this is how much this board clearly means to Mordrak. I mean, would anyone sane even care enough about an argument on a message board with strangers to start launching "fuck you!"s all over the place? Anyhow, I regret the insults I threw back in turn, and I’m done with this thread.
And Mordrak, sorry to break this to you, but if your opinions really mattered, you wouldn’t have to post them to a message board on the net frequented by a couple of dozen people who like videogames. Lighten up, Francis.
Oh gawd. Maybe if you had read the fucking thread in the first place and realized I was responding to Ryan’s ignorant passive aggressive condescension, you’d know the context in which I was using the word stupid. Go choke on your sudden self-righteousness and die.
The Detroit metro area is excellent, though, as those photos show, the city itself has huge sections that are degraded beyond belief. Woeful mismanagement and outright theft by those left in charge of the city has only made things worse as the years go on and yet, somehow the citizens of Detroit continue to elect thieves and morons. Trust me when I say that there is a lot more to this area than burned out buildings and abandoned schools. Or you can continue to take the same obvious cheap shots that everyone else across the country does.
I think Rimbo was commiserating, not taking a cheap shot a Detroit. It didn’t help that I raised the visible anger in the thread about ten fold. I like the second photo in that set. It looks like the house is melting.
Realize that we have a lot of folks from an area of the country that has a very different culture than what you and I are used to. Call it the “mill culture” versus the “driller culture.” You and I maybe grew up descendants of frontiersmen for whom an empty field or a junkyard was an opportunity, but for a large number of Americans they grew up in a culture where there was The Mill. The Mill was always there. Their grandfathers worked at The Mill all their lives; their fathers worked at The Mill all their lives, and they will work at The Mill all their lives. And everything around them either was The Mill or supported The Mill.
For them, The Mill is a timeless entity, and no thought is given as to why it was there.
For people in the Rust Belt, GM, Ford and Chrysler were The Mill. They are now faced with the unthinkable and unfathomable idea that The Mill may no longer exist.
These ideas of cost-benefits analysis, adapting to markets, etc. have no real meaning for such people. Sure, maybe they read about these ideas in a book! But they don’t grok the ideas; it’s completely foreign to them. And in fact, for this culture, accepting change is seen as a rejection of their family, a rebellion against their very values. Because they identify with The Mill as strongly as they identify with being Americans.
What you’re seeing in the responses to your comments are not logical points of view but emotional responses based on people for whom the idea of a world without GM is commensurate to a world without drinkable water or food. It is an Armageddon hypothesis.
If there is a valid counter-argument to your supposition, it is this: These people are not capable of finding a new job if there is no more GM and Chrysler. Once their cheese gets moved, they have no idea what to do next or where to go. And The Grapes of Wrath will apply to this whole new generation as they try to go somewhere to find the same jobs they had, that their parents had, that their grandparents had, without seeing the new opportunities that have opened up as a result of these changes.
They are sheep ripe for the shearing, in other words.
