on your 3 points-

Ok we have taken care of point 1 concerning active workers and have agreed Government Healthcare would probably help, at least some, but not much.

Point 3 about home countries, I don’t even want to talk about because I don’t know what can be done or should be done.

On your point 2. I understand about the pensioners. That is a tremendous problem that was developed in a time when GM and it’s workers were very well off. Contracts were asked for and given and now there is just not enough money anymore.
As I think I remember, at least some of those Autoworker pensioners can’t even have their health care plan modified by a new contract. When they retired, it was frozen at the then contract terms in force.
In other words, these people don’t even have co-pays, and the courts said that their deal couldn’t be changed to where they had to have them. What we call ”a pretty good deal if you can get it,” but today it is a dinosaur that is sinking down in the tar pit.

If GM doesn’t go bankrupt, then the retirees will be just like the active workers. I just don’t think that can continue without drastic changes in coverage.

If GM does go bankrupt, then those people will lose the right to access GM for those health care funds. If the Union still has money then that might be accessed.
The US Govt will work it’s formula and back up the pensions these people lost, but as I understand, that will not pertain to medical care.
The retirees will then be responsible for their own medical care using the Union, or whatever they can get from the Government and medicare if they are 65. With their pensions they would not probably be eligible for medicaid normally, and so as well off individuals will have to pay for insurance in some plan the Obama team has not yet released..

With steel, as with autos, as with shipbuilding, teh burden of legacy costs meant these industries were competing against newer entrants, but instead of investing in R&D, tehy invested in healthcare and pensions.

With all due respect Marcy, US steel invested nothing in plants for decades before they had any significant competition. Yes they had legacy costs. They also had near monopoly. And during this time, they smoked cigars and sipped fine whiskey… and not much else.

By the time Japanese steel arrived, it was too late.

And FWIW, on subject I mentioned in other thread (good unions and bad): Steelworker’s Union was the later, and I don’t mean that in a small way. They had more task exemptions for more different grades & specialties, damn near needed a team to turn a pump… that is, if you could catch one not on break time.

I saw a lot of it up close and personal as welder/machinist on site in Fontana. It was literally shocking… amazing to me they got anything done.

But you’re missing how investment works, on this as in the auto industry.

With steel, as with autos, as with shipbuilding, teh burden of legacy costs meant these industries were competing against newer entrants, but instead of investing in R&D, tehy invested in healthcare and pensions.

OBVIOUSLY an industry that doesn’t invest in R&D and is competing against plants that are 30 years newer, with newer technology, are going to fall behind. But if you relieved them of the costs that their competitors weren’t paying, you might expect them to match their technological advance.

But it’s also what killed our domestic steel and shipbuilding industries.

Healthcare costs for steel?

Really dilapidated, very inefficient US steel plants were much more a culprit in that one then case w/Detroit today. US STEEL management over their domain was almost as bad as BushCo’s over theirs. Despite foreign “dumping” of product here in late 80’s-90’s, their (especially Japanese) facilities were far superior to ours.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech Thursday night and lost consciousness, a Justice Department official said.

AP account of this, as printed in ABQJournal this morning, added one more poignant (IMO) detail of this circumstance:

Mukasey (…) was 15 to 20 minutes into his speech about the Bush admin’s successes in combating terrorism when he began slurring his words.

Looks to me like object lesson in price one pays for selling their sole. Can’t help but wonder how many other Bushies gon’a be having coronaries in coming months.

I’m all for a national single-payer health care system, but I think this analysis distorts the truth of the competitive situation in the worldwide auto industry. Both Toyota and GM face a complex and dynamic market and each has a distinct set of advantages and disadvantages. A national health care system would help GM, but this sort of reductionism ignores a lot of complexity.

but your answer here is much more sophisticated than the post you linked to.

That was the weird thing at Congress earlier in the week–everyone was worried about GM using bailout money to make cars in Russia or China. What they missed is that GM is making a profit in those places, just not here.

SOme service jobs you can’t outsource to other countries and with things like phone centers and programming, it’s still a matter of paying really cheap wages.

But it’s also what killed our domestic steel and shipbuilding industries. You’d think by now someone would have noticed and tried to fix the problem.

Second, it’s not so much that GM has to pay for its workers who are currently building cars. It has to pay for its workers who have retired, and have health benefits but are not making cars. There are something like 3 employees getting health care for every one assembling cars. In addition to the national health care, per se, it also has to do with when Toyota got to this country. Most of its factories are new–10 or 20 years old. That means there are very very few retirees associated with those factories. Whereas in Ford, there are two generations of people, at least, associated with still active factories getting benes.

Finally, you need to consider the things a car company does in its home country. Design and engineer work, and manufacture of new models (until a market builds up in a particular country). That’s still an awful lot of jobs for each country, and GM has to pay those 75,000 people (say) healthcare, whereas Toyota has to pay much less. So for things like the Fit and the (until 2010, when a US plant will open) Prius, both of which have really shitty margins for Japanese, at least they’re not paying health care costs on top of their shitty margins for those cars.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech Thursday night and lost consciousness, a Justice Department official said.

Hmmmm @ 8:

Pardon me piling onto your interruption of MD’s interruption of the thread, but may I just oh-so-briefly point out: Attorney General … Federalist Society … praying lawyers. The beams, they cross.

Whole even looks to me like an apt metaphor capturing state of the country, I’m afraid.