Bankruptcy and Reorganization for Detroit?

FWIW, according to the classic business school definition of creating
wealth, wealth is created by one of 3 things: mining, growing, or making
(manufacturing from what is mined or grown).

 

I'm in FL. Professors at state universities haven't had raises in
years and have left, to move from places like coastal FL to the
semi-rural south for more money.

Pinellas Bayway has two bridges. You can cross both for a 50 cent
toll. The toll hasn't changed for 30+ years. The state dept of trans
decided they needed to raise the toll so the bridges could be
replaced. People griped. FDOT said no, we need the money. People
griped some more and FDOT got over ruled.

FL Gov Charlie Crist is such a wimp he couldn't even get a sin tax
past the talking stage... proposed an increase in the cigarette tax,
which is a mere 39 cents. Backed down after a week.

 

Like you, I just heard the ad. I assumed they wouldn't advertise it
if it weren't true.

Subaru has some guillable customers. Take a look at their website for
their explanation of why their flat four is superior to a V6 from a
vibration standpoint. I know you're an auto guy. You'll have a good
laugh. Those V6 powered cars must be a bear to even drive down the
road straight! (If you believe their website.)

 

There was - it's called hot-dip galvanizing I believe. ;-)

Of course! They would demand it because the color of the bridge is
historically significant!!!! ;-)

Ted

 

If you repair a broken car that would otherwise be scrapped,
your "making" a car from this definition, are you not?

After all your repairing the car is no different from a new car maker
buying the scrap cars, melting them down and making new steel then
making the cars from the steel.

Ted

 

Anyone else got information or at least a theory on why it would be an
evil thing to build on a landfill? I would have thought that would be
considered a good thing by the greenies. But then again, you never can
tell with them. You were the devil if you did a certain thing last
week, but if you *don't* do that very same thing this week, you're now
the devil. Windmills a good thing? Why certainly! Oh - wait - they
kill birds, so now we can't have windmills.

I owned a 1986 Subaru turbo wagon as my daily driver and sold it running
beautifully with the original engine and turbo unit with 275k miles on
it. I can tell you that the flat H (known as the "boxer" design because
the motion of the pistons and conn. rods resembles the motion of
opposing boxers hands and arms) is unbelievably smooth.

You can understand why that is so. A V design has inherently unbalanced
vector forces and impulses that could never be balanced out. I'm not
saying that Subaru's description of that imbalance isn't exagerated, but
they *don't* exagerate the inherent smoothness of the flat H design.

 

Oops - two g's in exaggerate.

 

Bill,

I'd suspect it is not possible to build on top of a closed landfill since
the ground would constantly be shifting/sinking as the landfill's contents
decomposed. I'd also suspect that the methane gas that was released as the
stuff decomposed would be stifling. (Not particularly an attractive place
to live or work, but on a positive note, if the gas could be harvested, the
new owner could probably heat a structure from the methane produced there...

Bob

 

They built a Walmart on a landfill hearbouts and
have wells sunk to draw off the methane.

 

OK - thanks Bob.

I guess it just begs the question of why someone who is buying a car
cares whether the factory that built it is built on a landfill or not.
People just seem to be nuts about the stupidest things sometimes.

 

The local TV news channel did a story about a month ago about a group of
houses that was build on a landfill.

For one house in particular - areas of the front lawn had erupted into
some sort of low-level burn during the past 1 or 2 summers. Turned part
of it black. I think the landfill dated to 75 years ago and it's
location was poorly documented.

You do not want to build anything other than maybe a golf course or a
park on what was once a landfill.

 

I believe it was NY State AG that sued some server operators to squelch
internet porn distribution, and in response, some large server operators simply
shut down their whole operation, while others axed a wide variety of
newsgroups. Lots of people, faced with now having to pay some private
newserver operator like Supernews a monthly fee, just decided to exit the
usenet scene entirely.

 

OK, how did this get into a discussion of Subaru building their plant
**on** a landfill?

From the Subaru site

http://www.subaru.com/sub/misc/environment/index.html

The Subaru Clean Plant
Consider this: When you carry out your trash at home on the next
collection day, you'll be sending more trash to landfills than the
entire Subaru manufacturing plant in Lafayette, Indiana (SIA). The
Subaru plant was the first auto assembly plant to achieve zero
landfill status - nothing from its manufacturing efforts goes into a
landfill. It's all reused and recycled.

 

That is true. And it is meeting the requirements of creating wealth in
every regard.

However, if the part that had failed had been redesigned (to cost no
more initially) in time to be built into that vehicle such that it never
failed in the first place, I submit that that will have created wealth
too (and even more-so because it skips the repair event, the costs of
which actually subtract from the overall "wealth", but also the costs of
the redesign and re-tooling required would have to be subtracted out
from the net wealth), though it doesn't meet the classic definition.
And though the effect would be "silent" (for the owner of the car - the
proverbial tree that no-one is there to hear), it would be real.
Thousands/millions of such improvements would result in measurable
increase in standard of living over time - the so-called march of
technology (though I wonder if some technological "advancements" are net
losses, but to assess that, sometimes you have to put an artificial
dollar value on intangibles, or at least be very thorough in your
"bookkeeping" to register *all* effects).

 

Ahh! The light just went on. You have educated an ignorant consumer
(me). Thanks for the first explanation/clarification that made total
sense. Am I the only one that when they heard the commercials thought
they meant it was built on top of a landfill?

 

Doesn't add up.

The Great Depression occurred during an era of gold backed dollars.

Depends on the type of government spending. As an example, wise
spending in infrastructure is a good thing. Spending money on wars is
a bad thing.

Huh? HUH?!?!?

The North American market is the biggest market for GM, Ford, and
Chrysler. They don't have to adjust anything. Their vehicles are
specifically designed from the beginning for this market.

The only worry for GM, Ford, and Chrysler is caused by their decision
to act as distributors, rather than manufacturers, of their small
cars.

Toyota has only recently approached GM as the world's largest auto
maker. It isn't that Toyota "can use their global resources much
better". Its in the execution: they **do** use their global resources
much better.

Right. And what you have is a few thousand people where, in an
attempt to defeat them, the US has a military of hundreds of thousands
of people. Plus the military bureaucracy of many thousands more, and
then all the suppliers. Adds up to employing the efforts of millions
to try to defeat thousands which, of course, is impossible anyway as
observed by Che Guevarra.

 

The great depression was in the central banking era.

The US federal government likes war. It also likes poor spending
decisions on infrastructure.

Goto http://www.ford.co.uk/ and tell me how ford doesn't have fuel
effecient vehicles to sell. The point is that they cannot quickly react
to changing market conditions. They are stuck flat-footed when buyer
preferences shift.

The problem is specifically that they have product locked down into
specific markets. They can't easily sell US made vehicles elsewhere nor
can they easily sell elsewhere made vehicles in the US. It is really a
poor use of resources and creates a huge upfront cost and time lag to
react to shifting market preferences.

They make a good number of small cars for overseas markets.

GM can't just decide to import a car without the UAW throwing a fit.
When it decided to bring a Holden (Holden is as GM as pontiac) car to
the US market, still making it in the Aussie facilities, the UAW through
a fit. This was for a relatively low production speciality car.

The US federal government has done much better than that. By bombing
people's weddings and what not it has increased the number of enemies.

 

Aside from being a totally idiotic idea it amounts to a trade subsidy which will
break WTO rules and in return US exports will taxed extra heavily by importing
nations.

Graham

 

Spot on !

Graham

 

I didn't say it was the same, I said it was similar, and I pointed
out that it's legalized.

Of course, the Constitution doesn't give any authority to collect
SS tax, or Medicare, or every tax on every utility you pay for, or
a license fee, or any number of thousands of other taxes that
aren't income tax.

But just because the government says it's legal doesn't make it
any less of theft than it was before. The effect is the same.