Reading
this recommended diary was thought provoking, however, I want to address something the diarist touched on:
This describes a company and an industry that refuses to ask the government to step in and figure out a way to provide health care to its workers. Those health costs are really what is dragging down GM, not the fact that their employees dare to earn a living wage when everyone else (other than the senior management) is supposed to only make 1 to 2 times the (below the poverty line) minimum wage.
I've heard this repeated many, many times. While there undoubtedly is some truth to the weight of healthcare costs, I'd like to point something out for the record:
Almost every single vehicle GM makes is crap
I could go through the entire product list of every GM brand and point out how the vast majority of the vehicles are out of date, bland, ugly, crap to drive, and utterly not class competitive. From pickups, to SUV's, to everything in between, there are only a very few bright spots in GM's line up.
[Those would be the new Corvette, the new Corvette Z06, the Cadillac CTS and CTS-v, the Pontiac Solstice ... and thats it.]
Take it from a certifiable car nut; You cannot succeed in the modern auto industry if your company is run by fucking accountants and non-car people. GM's products have been utterly risible for something like 20 years. Only time will tell if Lee Iacoca can save them, but I doubt it.