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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.)

#41

Post by hugh »

hugh wrote: post #35
edw519 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

I should clarify: actually GM's problem is not that their sales are low or that their gross profit per vehicle is particularly low either -- their problem is that they have enormous fixed costs (including, but not limited to, pensions for retired employees) which makes them particularly susceptible to small sales downturns in a way that many other car companies aren't.

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

#43

Post by hugh »

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 think the quality is lower, and I include in that my own contributions to those debates.

The other thing is: if you want to discuss the election, or Iran, or Iraq, or unions, or the economy, you can do that on just about every forum on the internet. But if you want to discuss, say, VC-backed vs bootstrapped businesses, or how much stock an eighth employee should get, or [I dunno, insert third example here], there are very few places where you'll find a critical mass of people who know what they're talking about.

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

#44

Post by aggieben »

The sorry decline of General Motors has proved Reuther right: the government is the better provider of social insurance. Let industry worry about selling products.

Huh? Seems to me that this just proved that the market is a better provider of "social insurance" in the form of products people want (i.e., medical care at market prices) than anything collective offered by either the unions or the government. Hasn't this guy ever heard of Social Security and it's looming insolvency? Why don't the same arguments apply? Just think...how much easier it would be for the government to prop up the financial sector temporarily (not that I'm for that...just following the argument here) if it didn't have 3 limbs tied behind it's back by SS/Medicare/Medicaid?

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

#45

Post by gruseom »

hugh wrote: post #43
gruseom wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think the quality is lower, and I include in that my own contributions to those debates. The other thing is: if you want to discuss the election, or Iran, or Iraq, or unions, or the economy, you can do that on just about every forum on the internet. But if you want to discuss, say, VC-backed vs bootstrapped businesses, or how much stock an eighth employee should get, or [I dunno, insert third example here], there a…

I think the quality is lower, and I include in that my own contributions to those debates.

I was surprised to read this because your comments have usually seemed very good to me. But then I ran across http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242733 - so I'll concede the point on that thread. :)

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

#46

Post by jhancock »

This article is bunk and a clear propaganda effort. GM is dying because its a big old company and big old companies die..and..because as a nation, the U.S. does not protect its companies/citizens from the effects of global free trade.

The stock price is a different story. This article misses something important. Was there some massive cover-up with GM's financials? No. The debt due to pensions and such is not new information. If the stock buyers and analysts didn't adequately project a meaningful market price based on GM's published financials, who is to blame? Unions? No, the stock should be priced lower if thats whats on the books. Don't blame unions for bubble markets and the unfounded position that stock prices and company value should always grow.

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