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Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

nytimes.com

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Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#31

Post by edw519 »

jcl wrote: post #28
edw519 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't happen to have better examples? No. These weren't "examples". They were caricatures. Because the statement is absurd. What difference do your margins make if no one wants to buy your stuff? We're all so good at tech and so used to eyeball driven apps that it's easy to lose sight of the single most important fact of business: sooner or later someone has to be a customer . I never entered the "labor vs. ma…

OK... It sounds like you are actually in violent agreement with josefresco's statement that both demand and profit margin are important. :)

Of course they're both important. No accountant could possibly argue with that.

But that's not what josefresco said. He said that profit margin is just as important as demand. I say it's not. Nothing "violent" about it.

A huge corporation has violated the most basic business rules, including perhaps the biggest, "Make something people want." And we debate about it.

But if GM was a web app and this was a "How do you like my app" posts, we would be shredding them here. You lost 75% of your equity in one year?!? You have no small cars to sell?!? We'd be telling them to go to barber college.

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#32

Post by hugh »

edw519 wrote: post #29
hugh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is to do with their financial situation, not with their sales. Sales are down slightly, but GM still sells more cars than anybody on Earth (except maybe Toyota, I haven't kept up with the sales figures for this year). Every time they sell a car, it's because somebody has decided they want the GM product instead of any of the many other products they could have. There are weak spots in their product line (especi…

Which is to do with their financial situation What could possibly matter more than their financial situation? Honestly, ownership actually paid management to lose 75% of their equity in one year? That's only a little better than playing the lottery. especially not having a decent entry in the small car market for the US What else is there now? Don't you think it's been management's responsibility (maybe their biggest…

What else is there now?

I'm looking at a list of the top ten cars sold last month. Four models were small cars (Corolla, Civic, Cobalt and Focus), four were mid-to-large sedans sedans (Camry, Accord, Altima and Sonata) and two were big trucks (Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado).

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#33

Post by edw519 »

hugh wrote: post #30
edw519 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't happen to have better examples? No. These weren't "examples". They were caricatures. Because the statement is absurd. What difference do your margins make if no one wants to buy your stuff? We're all so good at tech and so used to eyeball driven apps that it's easy to lose sight of the single most important fact of business: sooner or later someone has to be a customer . I never entered the "labor vs. ma…

Last month, GM sold 262,329 vehicles in the US alone. Toyota, in second place, sold 193,234. Ford and Chrysler took the third and fourth spots, with Honda in fifth. You can't claim that "hardly anybody" is buying Detroit's products. And that's just in the US. You wanna know what the top-selling car in Europe is? It's the Opel/Vauxhall Astra -- a GM product -- with nearly half a million sold last year. The Ford Focus…

I said "hardly anyone wants Detroit's cars". Remove trucks (yes, that includes SUVs) and fleet vehicles from your figures.

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#34

Post by hugh »

edw519 wrote: post #33
hugh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last month, GM sold 262,329 vehicles in the US alone. Toyota, in second place, sold 193,234. Ford and Chrysler took the third and fourth spots, with Honda in fifth. You can't claim that "hardly anybody" is buying Detroit's products. And that's just in the US. You wanna know what the top-selling car in Europe is? It's the Opel/Vauxhall Astra -- a GM product -- with nearly half a million sold last year. The Ford Focus…

I said "hardly anyone wants Detroit's cars". Remove trucks (yes, that includes SUVs) and fleet vehicles from your figures.

I don't have the broken-down figures, but I'm sure GM would still be one of the top two or three car manufacturers on the planet if you broke it down that way.

Doesn't "top selling car in Europe" mean anything to you?

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#35

Post by hugh »

edw519 wrote: post #31
jcl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK... It sounds like you are actually in violent agreement with josefresco's statement that both demand and profit margin are important. :)

Of course they're both important. No accountant could possibly argue with that. But that's not what josefresco said. He said that profit margin is just as important as demand. I say it's not. Nothing "violent" about it. A huge corporation has violated the most basic business rules, including perhaps the biggest, "Make something people want." And we debate about it. But if GM was a web app and this was a "How do you l…

This debate is getting silly. Is profit margin more or less important than demand, or just as important? It's a meaningless question.

If you have a nice fat profit margin but nobody wants to buy your product, that's no good. If you're selling lots of products but making no profit on it, that's no good either.

But if you're like GM, and you're selling millions of units a year, each for tens of thousands of dollars, and you're still not making a profit, I think we can diagnose the problem as being in the margins, not in the sales.

Seriously though, if you want to go on a whine about how bad American cars are, I suggest the comments at autoblog.com which are suitable for that kind of inanity. But for this site, I have to say that the sales figures don't support the idea that demand for GM cars is small.

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#36

Post by jrockway »

josefresco wrote: post #14
edw519 wrote: post #7

Make cars people want.

It's kind of tough to succeed when your workers (with the same skills) get paid 2-3x what competing car companies pay. Profit margins are just as important to a company's success as demand. See Internet math of the late 90's for a perfect example of what 1000000 * 0 equals.

Maybe the car companies should try the XBox business model. Sell the cars at a loss, then only let them use special gas that is massively marked up.

For $7.99 a month, you can have "airbag live gold" which automatically deploys the airbags during a crash. A great idea!

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#37

Post by gruseom »

davidw wrote: post #9
cmcginnis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."

What you guys don't seem to realize or take seriously is that enough of this stuff (Obama, Iran, unions, etc...) will drive the quality of the site down, just like reddit. "Non computer" stuff is often ok if it's just some random, interesting thing that's "food for the brain", but when you get into politics and economics (at least some kinds of economics) and stuff like that, it's just poison.

I don't see evidence of the quality going down. As far as I can tell, discussions around non-computer, non-startup posts are as high-quality as discussions in general. And the vast majority of troll/spam/flamejunk I run across here has already been killed.

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#38

Post by davidw »

gruseom wrote: post #37
davidw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you guys don't seem to realize or take seriously is that enough of this stuff (Obama, Iran, unions, etc...) will drive the quality of the site down, just like reddit. "Non computer" stuff is often ok if it's just some random, interesting thing that's "food for the brain", but when you get into politics and economics (at least some kinds of economics) and stuff like that, it's just poison.

I don't see evidence of the quality going down. As far as I can tell, discussions around non-computer, non-startup posts are as high-quality as discussions in general. And the vast majority of troll/spam/flamejunk I run across here has already been killed.

> I don't see evidence of the quality going down.

My recollection with reddit was that it was a 'tipping point' sort of process, and it went fairly quickly from being good to full of politics articles with roving bands of morons voting down everything they disagreed with.

Re: Who shot General Motors? (Labor unions, in 1950.)

#40

Post by davidw »

hugh wrote: post #34
edw519 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "hardly anyone wants Detroit's cars". Remove trucks (yes, that includes SUVs) and fleet vehicles from your figures.

I don't have the broken-down figures, but I'm sure GM would still be one of the top two or three car manufacturers on the planet if you broke it down that way. Doesn't "top selling car in Europe" mean anything to you?

The European cars (like the Opel I have) are built by highly unionized European employees, though, right? The models Ford builds in Europe are pretty good too.
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