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573,000 jobs lost last month and people want to dance on the grave of a MAJOR national industry?? This not good news for people like me who worry things are gon

573,000 jobs lost last month and people want to dance on the grave of a MAJOR national industry?? This not good news for people like me who worry things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better. Anyway, with all that capital just floating around it should be a snap to recreate a heavy manufacturing based industry. Maybe those free market geniuses can make it as awesome as the financial industry or the health care industry.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
- programnature 18y ago
  The executives and the union bosses, sure. But the people who are gonna suffer the most are the 1) run of the mill workers, 2) the contractor subeconomy, and 3) the rest of us In a good economy, sure let them fail. Though I find the lack of consideration and compassion for the human pain this would cause pretty appalling. "Yea, lets optimize them away" is not an attitude we need more of in this country.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    It's not about lack of compassion. It's about whether or not it will really save jobs.
    - programnature 18y ago
      Perhaps for you. For others, its about putting abstract ideas and free market worship ahead of real people and real consequences to these abstractions.
      - mattmaroon 18y ago
        For some, probably. But I think most people these days aren't free market ideologues anymore. Even Alan Greenspan isn't.
        deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
      - davidw 18y ago
        The solution is pretty evident: help out those who need it with some money from the government, health care, retraining and so on. I.e. "save people", not "save jobs".
      - jerf 18y ago
        You're running on the unstated assumption that the bailout will work. This is not safe to assume. Tossing people out on the street can still be more merciful than bailing them out, if the bailout fails and you still toss them out onto the street, only into a worse situation. Or, if you further distort the economy to bailout the poor auto workers, you may toss out millions of other people onto the street instead, only not in one recognizable group. The idea that this bailout is free, harmless, and guaranteed to work is wrong on three counts. It's not a choice between "Save their jobs" and "heartlessly cut their jobs", it's a matter of figuring out where the pain goes and how to minimize it, and there are more stakeholders here than just the autoworkers. Raising taxes to save the autoworkers will drive other businesses out of business and drive other taxpayers over the edge into bankruptcy, and the fact that they are not easily visible doesn't make that less true. Failing to raise taxes means that much more debt, which has its own consequences. (Regardless, you can't get away from opportunity costs.) I believe in free market optimization precisely because I believe it is the most merciful and the best for the autoworkers and everybody else in the medium and long run, and the more you dick with the short run by stealing money from the productive to pay for the unproductive, the worse the medium and long run get.
mattmaroon 18y ago
Auto industry jobs will only be lost due to lowering demand, which won't change with or without the bailout. For one, American car companies won't disappear. Read up on Chapter 11. They'll be restructured. Some layoffs may occur, but they need to anyway, otherwise this bailout would only forestall the inevitable. The only way American car companies can compete long term is to get down to similar cost basis to foreign ones, which means their cars have to take a similar amount of man hours to build. And if they did fold, people won't just stop buying cars. They'll just buy different cars that were made mostly here in America, which employee the same number of people to build that a viable American car company would. It's easy to say bailout = jobs, but that's sadly just not true. In the long run it won't save any, and it will cost a fortune. If it's done right, it will ensure viability, which means loss of jobs. If it's not done at all, it will mean restructuring and/or a shift to Japanese cars which means the same loss of jobs.
- programnature 18y ago
  You can't just juggle the variables like that because there are discontinuities and nonlinear effects. Industries interact with each other. What is happening to auto is mostly caused by 1) the financial crisis making credit scarce and 2) a huge drop in demand (30-40%) that no industry could sustain For a "elderly and weak" patient such as auto, this is too much. Fine. But what happens if auto goes down, which the OP is celibrating? What other weak or newly weakened sectors does it take down with it? Btw, chapter 11 is the best case, it could go chapter 7. We don't know.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Well, it wasn't caused by those factors, only accelerated. They've been struggling for a very long time. Toyota is sustaining the drop just fine. If GM had Toyota's good will, brand image, and cost basis, they would be too. They need that to compete in the long run. And they've done a good job of working on lowering their cost basis over the last 5 years, along with the Unions, but they've still got a long way to go and are progressing slowly. Without serious oversight in the bailout it's just throwing money down a well. Or so goes the theory. You can choose to believe it's wrong (and you may be correct, it's a complex issue) but it's disingenuous and mean-spirited to say that the people against it are happy about job losses. They're happy that a bill that they believe is throwing money down a well and only delaying job losses didn't pass.
tdavis 18y ago
What were you expecting? Things were always going to get worse before they got better. This is the restructuring of a global economy that had become far too reliant on debt. More companies and industries will go under; more jobs will be lost. Remember, the employees may not have chosen the company strategy, but they chose to be with that company. I will dance on the grave of every company and industry that dies now because it means the restructuring is working. Nobody is putting them on life support. Nobody is saying, "It's okay you royally fucked up." They're dying, as they should be.
- programnature 18y ago
  There are a lot of exciting opportunities to restructure things that have sucked for a long time. This is a good thing. However, your logic doesn't make any sense. A bank can be totally solvent, but be wiped out by a bank run due to forces outside of their control. Similarly plenty of otherwise profitable businesses can be wiped out when the entire economy heads south. This is called throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What I am expecting in governance that doesn't dig us into a deeper hole. By the way, the worse the US economy gets, the worse the world economy gets. Do you really want a nuclear pakistan/india go off the deep end?
  - tdavis 18y ago
    When the entire economy tanks, sure, it's going to take some businesses with it. There's a difference, though, when your business is so reliant on the poor choices that got us into this mess that it goes out of business practically over night when everyone finally realizes, "Wait, this isn't working anymore." The auto companies aren't much better off; the best was, what, 6 months to survive without a bailout? There will be collateral damage. That's just part of the deal. As I mentioned, this is a global event so yes, I realize the worse the US economy gets the worse the World economy gets, at least relatively speaking. I would prefer that one of the nuclear countries not go off the deep end and trigger a nuclear war, but I have no reasonable belief that they will either.
    - silencio 18y ago
newt0311 18y ago
Fake jobs kept afloat through government spending and therefore funds from taxpayers is even worse in the long run than jobs lost now because at least those people now out of work can find other gainful employment where they are actually needed. Over the long term (which in this case is anything over 3 years), its far far better that the big 3 go bankrupt now and fire a large portion of their employee base than for them to stay on a zombies on federal life support and continue to drain the economy forever. Remember, government financing isn't free.
eru 18y ago
What's so magic about heavy manufacturing that (stereotypical) Americans always long for it?
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  I think it has to do with a deep-seated desire for complete self-sufficiency. The ability to create things and not just perform abstract mental work or do service jobs is a key symbol of that yearning. The USA started out as a colony and had to fend for itself. That mindset has not left.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

programnature 18y ago
The executives and the union bosses, sure. But the people who are gonna suffer the most are the 1) run of the mill workers, 2) the contractor subeconomy, and 3) the rest of us In a good economy, sure let them fail. Though I find the lack of consideration and compassion for the human pain this would cause pretty appalling. "Yea, lets optimize them away" is not an attitude we need more of in this country.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  It's not about lack of compassion. It's about whether or not it will really save jobs.
  - programnature 18y ago
    Perhaps for you. For others, its about putting abstract ideas and free market worship ahead of real people and real consequences to these abstractions.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      For some, probably. But I think most people these days aren't free market ideologues anymore. Even Alan Greenspan isn't.
      - deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
    - davidw 18y ago
      The solution is pretty evident: help out those who need it with some money from the government, health care, retraining and so on. I.e. "save people", not "save jobs".
    - jerf 18y ago
      You're running on the unstated assumption that the bailout will work. This is not safe to assume. Tossing people out on the street can still be more merciful than bailing them out, if the bailout fails and you still toss them out onto the street, only into a worse situation. Or, if you further distort the economy to bailout the poor auto workers, you may toss out millions of other people onto the street instead, only not in one recognizable group. The idea that this bailout is free, harmless, and guaranteed to work is wrong on three counts. It's not a choice between "Save their jobs" and "heartlessly cut their jobs", it's a matter of figuring out where the pain goes and how to minimize it, and there are more stakeholders here than just the autoworkers. Raising taxes to save the autoworkers will drive other businesses out of business and drive other taxpayers over the edge into bankruptcy, and the fact that they are not easily visible doesn't make that less true. Failing to raise taxes means that much more debt, which has its own consequences. (Regardless, you can't get away from opportunity costs.) I believe in free market optimization precisely because I believe it is the most merciful and the best for the autoworkers and everybody else in the medium and long run, and the more you dick with the short run by stealing money from the productive to pay for the unproductive, the worse the medium and long run get.

mattmaroon 18y ago

Auto industry jobs will only be lost due to lowering demand, which won't change with or without the bailout. For one, American car companies won't disappear. Read up on Chapter 11. They'll be restructured. Some layoffs may occur, but they need to anyway, otherwise this bailout would only forestall the inevitable. The only way American car companies can compete long term is to get down to similar cost basis to foreign ones, which means their cars have to take a similar amount of man hours to build. And if they did fold, people won't just stop buying cars. They'll just buy different cars that were made mostly here in America, which employee the same number of people to build that a viable American car company would. It's easy to say bailout = jobs, but that's sadly just not true. In the long run it won't save any, and it will cost a fortune. If it's done right, it will ensure viability, which means loss of jobs. If it's not done at all, it will mean restructuring and/or a shift to Japanese cars which means the same loss of jobs.

programnature 18y ago
You can't just juggle the variables like that because there are discontinuities and nonlinear effects. Industries interact with each other. What is happening to auto is mostly caused by 1) the financial crisis making credit scarce and 2) a huge drop in demand (30-40%) that no industry could sustain For a "elderly and weak" patient such as auto, this is too much. Fine. But what happens if auto goes down, which the OP is celibrating? What other weak or newly weakened sectors does it take down with it? Btw, chapter 11 is the best case, it could go chapter 7. We don't know.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Well, it wasn't caused by those factors, only accelerated. They've been struggling for a very long time. Toyota is sustaining the drop just fine. If GM had Toyota's good will, brand image, and cost basis, they would be too. They need that to compete in the long run. And they've done a good job of working on lowering their cost basis over the last 5 years, along with the Unions, but they've still got a long way to go and are progressing slowly. Without serious oversight in the bailout it's just throwing money down a well. Or so goes the theory. You can choose to believe it's wrong (and you may be correct, it's a complex issue) but it's disingenuous and mean-spirited to say that the people against it are happy about job losses. They're happy that a bill that they believe is throwing money down a well and only delaying job losses didn't pass.

tdavis 18y ago

What were you expecting? Things were always going to get worse before they got better. This is the restructuring of a global economy that had become far too reliant on debt. More companies and industries will go under; more jobs will be lost. Remember, the employees may not have chosen the company strategy, but they chose to be with that company. I will dance on the grave of every company and industry that dies now because it means the restructuring is working. Nobody is putting them on life support. Nobody is saying, "It's okay you royally fucked up." They're dying, as they should be.

programnature 18y ago
There are a lot of exciting opportunities to restructure things that have sucked for a long time. This is a good thing. However, your logic doesn't make any sense. A bank can be totally solvent, but be wiped out by a bank run due to forces outside of their control. Similarly plenty of otherwise profitable businesses can be wiped out when the entire economy heads south. This is called throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What I am expecting in governance that doesn't dig us into a deeper hole. By the way, the worse the US economy gets, the worse the world economy gets. Do you really want a nuclear pakistan/india go off the deep end?
- tdavis 18y ago
  When the entire economy tanks, sure, it's going to take some businesses with it. There's a difference, though, when your business is so reliant on the poor choices that got us into this mess that it goes out of business practically over night when everyone finally realizes, "Wait, this isn't working anymore." The auto companies aren't much better off; the best was, what, 6 months to survive without a bailout? There will be collateral damage. That's just part of the deal. As I mentioned, this is a global event so yes, I realize the worse the US economy gets the worse the World economy gets, at least relatively speaking. I would prefer that one of the nuclear countries not go off the deep end and trigger a nuclear war, but I have no reasonable belief that they will either.
  - silencio 18y ago

newt0311 18y ago

Fake jobs kept afloat through government spending and therefore funds from taxpayers is even worse in the long run than jobs lost now because at least those people now out of work can find other gainful employment where they are actually needed. Over the long term (which in this case is anything over 3 years), its far far better that the big 3 go bankrupt now and fire a large portion of their employee base than for them to stay on a zombies on federal life support and continue to drain the economy forever. Remember, government financing isn't free.

eru 18y ago

What's so magic about heavy manufacturing that (stereotypical) Americans always long for it?

LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
I think it has to do with a deep-seated desire for complete self-sufficiency. The ability to create things and not just perform abstract mental work or do service jobs is a key symbol of that yearning. The USA started out as a colony and had to fend for itself. That mindset has not left.