OT- Detroit shutting down? This is scary - Page 2

Our domestic owned car companies can't compete for a simple reason. Tthey pay the UAW workers much more in salary and benefits than foreign owned companies so one can say the UAW members brought this on themselves. Paying people 90% of their salary in a "job bank" where they do no work for years is ridiculous as only one example.

Notice Mercedes, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, and other foreign owned companies building cars in the U.S. are doing fine.

yeah, taxes are their problem.  never mind that they're paying massive amounts of money for health and retirement of employees that aren't producing anything for them any more.  They made promises that they cannot keep.  When things were great, they should have been planning for times when they wouldn't be, because everything falls on hard times eventually.  They weren't prepared.  They were too busy lining their own pockets and promising lavish retirements, never counting on the fact that their retired workforce would one day be larger than their actuall producing work force.  They also didn't seem to know that health care would continue to rise, especially on older retired workers.  Piss poor planning is what brought them down.

Oh please tell us how the uaw brought the bankruptcy of gm and chrysler upon as ! Alaman and zdog please divest your big brain of all the bs you have to blame the uaw for the car makers problem! I wonder if you know anything at all about govt. regulated pension plans? Probably not a thing! All union pension plans are strictly regulated by the federal govt.But you two seem to believe everything the rupert murdochs and his partners want you to believe. Her's a brain teaser for you who lack insight! The movie citizen cain! Ever see it where the main character is asked what will his readers think!!  Orsen Wells reply was that his readers would think "what he told them to think"  Did you know that those foriegn car makers in this country are subsidized by their govt ?Please refrain from announcing to other readers that it is all the unions fault!  Check out what the boys at the top of gm and chrysler made in the past year and all the bonuses and golden parachutes! If you want to spread blame spread it all around the toast and not just one corner!

Alaman
Wow.  Very intuitive.  Can you please explain it again.  To my knowledge,  Toyota does not have to pay the same amounts of pensions, here in the US, because frankly they have not been around quite as long as the likes of Ford or GM. 
And you're gonna sit here and blame the UAW members?  The system worked quite well for around 100 years until we opened up our market to the world, while the rest of the world import taxes the hell out of our products.  Where do you live?  Alaman means German in Spanish.  Are you a retired German living in Mexico?  If you are, please explain to the rest of the posters how I, as an auslander, cannot buy property in either of your countries.  I can buy a souvinier.  Thanks! 
I think we should start doing much of the same to everything coming into this country.  Perhaps, with the new taxes we can repay what we owe to China and we can balance the playing field of the auto industry.