Re: [Amc-list] Sins

[Archimedes <Freedom@xxxxxxxx>]

John Mahoney postulates:


>NUMMI, NAFTA, and NASA are not to blame: our schools, our teachers, our 
>kids, -ourselves- are.  Life got too easy, we got too confident; we got 
>too comfortable being the Americans that everyone else wanted to be 
>too.  Everyone else worked toward where we were, and then kept right on 
>going.  That's why GM and Ford and Chrysler and American Motors can't get 
>ahead.  Or why one of them --- two of them? --- three of them? --- now are 
>dead.


They're all either dead or on life support because Americans don't seem to 
understand that we're not ina  battle for whatever riches we can win today, 
and to heck with tomorrow -- we're in a battle to be economically alive 
tomorrow.

When Executives, Managers, and line workers start to understand that 
multimillion dollar salaries and $50 per hour wages and cushy 
pensions-for-life for assembly line work were an anomaly and cannot be 
supported indefinitely, maybe attitudes will change.  But I doubt it.  It 
seems like the entire culture is unwilling to get off the "give me every 
dime I want, or the factory can "Go To ....".

Why would $50 per hour workers rather see their factory close, than accept 
$25 per hour?  Why would executives want to see their livilihoods become 
the plaything of Chinese state bureaucrats?

If there is less demand for your product, YOU HAVE TO REDUCE THE PRICE 
until demand matches your supply.  Right now, there is less and less demand 
for American labor because its price is way too high, at every level -- 
worker, middle, and executive.

I keep seeing these sites with photos of all the dead factories in the 
industrial belt.  I earn a lot less than auto workers do.  I would enjoy 
factory work for my current pay (did it before).  Why am I prevented from 
selling my work to an auto factory for my current rate if I so choose?


>Speaking of assembled cars, try this:  Did Studebaker or AMC build any?


Sure, the AMGeneral Metro Bus:

         http://www.omot.org/roster/buses/amg.html

In all seriousness, AMC did build the last of the Diplomat/LeBaron 
line.  Does that qualify?

In addition, a lot of the later frankish metal was mostly assembled from 
parts made in France or otherwise sourced from Renault.  The Premier 
engines, for example, were Puegeot(sp?)-Renault-Volvo...  The Healey was 
made in Britain so that doesn't qualify...  And so was the Met.

Or do you mean a stand-alone line of cars that they built under their own 
brand name, but built entirely from off-the-shelf parts from outside 
manufacturers?  If that's what you mean, I don't have a clue.

Did I get the no-prize?

-- Marc

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