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'General Motors, Sears and Toys R Us: Layoffs Across America Highlight Our Shredding Financial Safety Net' (nbcnews.com)
New submitter Bruce Henry shares a story: Today's aging workforce faces an uncertain future. The announcement this week that General Motors will lay off 15 percent of its salaried workforce and shutter multiple plants in North America was a sobering reminder of how far the American worker has fallen. Unlike most large private sector corporations today, thousands of employees at GM still enjoy some union benefits. The company has reportedly set aside $2 billion for layoffs and buyouts. It's not much, but it's something -- many workers, if they are laid off en masse, will be far less lucky. Some older Americans are lucky enough to have been grandfathered into generous pension plans and others hope social security and personal savings will be enough to sustain themselves. But for millions of younger people, the outlook is bleaker -- an ever-diminishing social safety net, with retirement dependent almost entirely on how well they manage savings. Two-thirds of millennials have nothing saved for retirement.
The private sector pension as we once knew it is all but dead. Public sector pensions, meanwhile, are under attack at the state level. "Companies don't offer pensions anymore. Social security, when it was established, was meant to be one leg of a stool," says Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "One leg would be the private pension through employment, a second leg personal savings, and a third leg social security. Social security is now the only source of income of a lot elderly have." What, if anything, are our politicians doing about this? Progressives rail against President Donald Trump, but real retirement security has not been a big enough part of the conversation on either side of the political spectrum. Millions of Americans are in danger of entering their final decades unable to afford ballooning medical bills and cost-of-living expenses. This is a huge problem, and one that liberals in particular should have capitalized on this election cycle.
The private sector pension as we once knew it is all but dead. Public sector pensions, meanwhile, are under attack at the state level. "Companies don't offer pensions anymore. Social security, when it was established, was meant to be one leg of a stool," says Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "One leg would be the private pension through employment, a second leg personal savings, and a third leg social security. Social security is now the only source of income of a lot elderly have." What, if anything, are our politicians doing about this? Progressives rail against President Donald Trump, but real retirement security has not been a big enough part of the conversation on either side of the political spectrum. Millions of Americans are in danger of entering their final decades unable to afford ballooning medical bills and cost-of-living expenses. This is a huge problem, and one that liberals in particular should have capitalized on this election cycle.
It can only be your responsibility to provide for your financial safety. It seems many people misunderstand that word: "responsibility". It does not mean blame; it means you can't count on someone else to fix it. Sometime in your life, likely more than once, something financially horrible (and possibly horrible in other ways) is going to happen to you. It probably won't be your fault, but it will be your responsibility to carry on.
Shit's going to happen, so be as prepared as you can. For most of the time sine WWII, excepting the recent "great recession", six months expenses as savings would carry your through a layoff. Maintain medical insurance, and that amount will also see you through a medical catastrophe, or at least contain the debt to something manageable. Don't voluntarily take on debt and you've won half the battle.
If your under 50, don't expect social security to be worth enough to matter. Sucks, but yelling about it won't pay for your retirement. The younger you are, the more you'll get advantage from a 401K or IRA. Especially if you're in your 20s: sticking money away in a broad-based stock index fund and ignoring it for 40 years has amazing leverage, and that young you should plan on no useful assistance of any kind.
The lack of someone else providing you a safety net will suck. But you know that's how the world works, so plan accordingly, as best you can given your circumstances. You can't fix the overwhelming national debt ($178,000 per taxpayer!), but you can avoid carrying debt, and save what you can.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
FTA: with retirement dependent almost entirely on how well they manage savings. Two-thirds of millennials have nothing saved for retirement..... Social security, when it was established, was meant to be one leg of a stool," says Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "One leg would be the private pension through employment, a second leg personal savings, and a third leg social security. Social security is now the only source of income of a lot elderly have."
Everyone is completely bereft of personal responsibility? In the richest country in the history of the world, people can not be held responsible for their own future? They can be excused because they have to have the latest big-screen LED and Iphone? Fun fact: A high school student working less that 20 hours a week at minimum wage makes more than 90% of the rest of humanity.
As someone who has not been responsible with 401k savings, I can attest that it is not the rest of the country that is responsible for my retirement, and I do not care to hand more power over to clueless politicians and bureaucrats, which they will just use to garner more power. History has clearly shown they will badly mishandle any money that are given. Thank you, but no. Keep your so-called social security. I'll worry about me and mine.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It is interesting to watch people that are one minor accident or treatable chronic disease away from having to face reality.
What do people do when they don't have the money they need?
They turn to crime. Then they get arrested and put in jail, where tax money pays for all of their needs. Also, higher crime rates creates a whole hosts of costs that ultimately come out of your pocket, including more tax money for law enforcement and higher insurance premiums in the impacted industries.
They aren't going to conveniently just lay down and die, so, you, as the tax payer, will pay for their needs one way or the other.
We are in a situation where the jobs that pay are in short supply, and the jobs that are available do not pay enough for people to both live on and save for retirement. This is great for the people at the top, who get way more money than they would have if they had to cover the costs of pensions and livable wages...but it is a nightmare for everyone else (and no, it is NOT POSSIBLE for everyone to be at the top).
So, your dismissive attitude will only allow the problem to get worse, and you will be impacted by the consequences, one way or another.
The companies may blame this on trade wars, but lets be real here:
Toys-R-US was going under, regardless of what the political climate did. They needed to change with the times, because people buy cool stuff from Kickstarters, OK stuff from Amazon, and cheap stuff from Wally World. They needed to morph into a Sharper Image like store rather than compete with the wholesalers.
GM... well, the Buick Envision is a Chinese import, so are a number of their Cadillac models. Their cars have been anemic and lackluster for a while, and they have tossed technologies which could have been useful, such as hybrid pickup trucks and SUVs. They were losing money because their sedans were lackluster compared to the competition, and they didn't really innovate. So, they used the trade stuff as an excuse to shutter plants to focus on gas guzzling SUVs, which means come the next gas crunch, they will be back in Congress begging for another cash infusion, when the public is buying plug in hybrids or all electric cars from Toyota.
Both of those companies would be on the ropes no matter who is POTUS.
The US plays a slight-of-hand trick with its unemployment figures, cherrypicking whom it considers homeless in order to improve its image. for example The U-3 is the rate most often reported in the media. In the U-3 rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics only counts people without jobs who are in the labor force. To remain in the labor force, they must have looked for a job in the last four weeks.
The U-6, or real unemployment rate, includes the underemployed, the marginally attached, and discouraged workers.
Actual unemployment in the US is 7.4%.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Most Americans don't earn enough to pay for food, housing, medical care, and save for retirement. Maybe we should pay our workforce better, then we could talk about personal responsibility.
This "just be good" philosophy doesn't scale. If everyone had a PhD and A-plus GPA, there would not be enough positions for their talent. PhD's would end up mopping restrooms, with many unemployed.
Or are you a social Darwinist who believes the unproductive/lazy should be allowed to just wither & die so that we breed more productive humans?
Even if you hold this view, many would turn to a life of crime and/or riots out of desperation, making for a nasty society.
We are on the crest of a typical economic cycle. A recession is almost certain within a few years.
Table-ized A.I.
If you want to retire comfortably, you need to make the most of your productive years. Not hope for a last minute bail out.
to your advice I would add, live a solo life, never have kids, never suffer a major illness and never trust the finance industry. any one of those mistakes and all your hard won savings vanishes.
This is a huge problem, and one that liberals in particular should have capitalized on this election cycle.
Indeed, they should have capitalized on it. But we're talking about the party that lost the white house to the man who is arguably the least qualified politician since the dawn of our democracy. The democrats are practically synonymous with "pulling failure from the jaws of victory". Being as truth doesn't get votes any more, they ended up pretty much where we expected - they now control one half of one third of the government.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So what if some kid in the US rearns mote than most in the world. I could move and earn twice as mych. Cost of living would double or tripple. So I would be worse off with more money.
I also know people who took a pay cut and have a better life, because where they now live it is dirt cheap.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
GM is highly dependent on sales in China, which imports 13 billion dollars of cars from the US. GM also operates plants and joint ventures in China too. So to the degree that sanctions inflict economic pain on China, US companies and their workers will suffer along with the Chinese. This can affect even workers who are working on products sold in the US. As a company's resources contract, they direct those resources away from projects that are less profitable in the short term.
Now you could argue that we'd have been better off never getting into a trade relationship with China. That would be non-orthodox from an economic point of view, but you could make the case. But even if that were true, that doesn't mean you're better off disrupting that relationship. In business what you can accomplish from where you are is what matters, not where you could have been if things had been different.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As I understand it; Bain Capital came in and loaded ToysR Us down with debt, paid themselves, and sold off the husk.
A colleague from Germany was visiting our office recently. He was quite perplexed as to why on a lunch walk we all were discussing the stock market. Basically everyone has to be both investor and worker here. Over there there is a reasonable pension system and people focus on their jobs.
It is also clear from various lunch walks with well educated co-workers that steady investing is beyond the grasp of many otherwise smart and rational people. Some want to have "my guy" handle their stuff (cue Berny Madoff flashbacks), others have been on the sidelines waiting for prices to be "right" while insisting they are not timing the market (they are). It is saddening that this is where we expect most folks to draw their retirement from.
So while I don't suggest there should not be a system with zero responsibility, the current system is akin tossing baby seals into a shark tank and wishing them the best. I would like to see an expansion of social security to help fill the gap that has widened into a chasm between what people need and what they have to retire at a reasonable age.
What is your plan for these laid off GM workers? Where can they go when the largest employer in their city shuts down? Even if their skills are transferable, the plant next door does not have a use for thousands of extra employees. What if they need to move to find work? Is their home worth as much as they paid for it before a major employer skips town? Hell no it isn't, hopefully they're not underwater on the mortgage. There is no reasonable amount foresight, planning or training that can prepare someone working in manufacturing for their plant to close. They are absolutely, completely fucked.
Let's see, where is Toys and Sears work going...oh yeah, Amazon.
Just another day in Paradise
The only financial safety net you need is competence.
Oh bullshit. I'm a highly competent person and I've had to rely on unemployment payments in the past to get by. My mother suffered from and eventually died from ALS. She was a high level director at one of the big accounting firm but guess what? The fact that she was highly competent didn't mean shit to ALS. Eventually she needed to rely on the social safety net including social security disability before she passed. Many people find themselves in difficult circumstances for reasons beyond their control and they need help. To say the reason for their status is that they lack competence is beyond insulting.
You have to be a special breed of idiot to think that you are so "competent" that you will never need help. Maybe you'll be lucky. Many others aren't.
We currently have move openings than people looking for work.
You think people are magically qualified for any available job? Just because my company needs a skilled machinist doesn't mean one is available. There ALWAYS are jobs that go unfilled because the skillsets of people looking for work never perfectly matches the skillsets needed by people doing the hiring.
From "This Day On Slashdot":
2005, Canada moves to keep skilled workers: https://it.slashdot.org/story/...
200, Election results certified: https://slashdot.org/story/00/...
Slashdot has always had stories about issues that affect nerds, like employment and politics.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Or are you a social Darwinist who believes the unproductive/lazy should be allowed to just wither & die so that we breed more productive humans?
Trust fund babies disprove that approach. If you want to ensure that the next generation is productive then greatly limit inheritance and eliminate trust funds.
Why is steady investing beyond the grasp of smart and rational people?
My friends often say I am too rational in all the things I do and decisions I make, but when I graduated from college 8 years ago I simply saw the benefit of cheap index funds and started funneling my money into my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA, maxing them out every year. Now it's 8 years later and I am 30 and I have about 400K in my accounts.
To me it couldn't have been simpler and I rarely look at or talk about the stock market.
I wonder what Trump had to promise GM for them to delay the announcement until after the election?
What's hilarious about this is the fact that Obama actually bailed them out and threw a huge bone to the union in the process. But I guess since a Democrat did it it's cool.
Just to make your head explode if it hasn't already, Donald Trump was on the record as being pro-gay-marriage. Obama ran on a platform against gay marriage.
Do you have ESP?
You wanna help retirees? Waive the damned property taxes.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In the past, a single house hold earner could provide for a family. Now it takes two.
Median household income in the US is around $44K per year. Given that most people manage to get by just fine obviously that is more than enough to provide for a family. No it won't by you a house in Beverly Hills but it's plenty enough to put food on the table and take care of necessities.
Government regulations and their impact on manufacturers.
I work in manufacturing and have made my career there. Your argument that government regulations have much to do with the problems in manufacturing highlights the fact that you don't know much about the economics of manufacturing. Manufacturing is doing just fine in the US. The US manufacturing sector is worth about $3 TRILLION annually which by itself would be among the 6 largest economies in the world. What has changed in the US is that wages have risen to among the highest in the world so all the labor intensive manufacturing left for places with low labor costs. Capital intensive manufacturing has remained because the US has the lowest cost of capital in the world. Government regulations are if anything helping by keeping cost of capital low.
The only major problem US manufacturing has right now is we have an idiot president (and cronies) who think that raising the cost of everything we buy is somehow going to magically going to benefit us. Tariffs will solve no problem that currently exists in manufacturing. They will not bring manufacturing jobs to the US (actually the opposite is what will happen) and they will not force China to play nice.
What really gets me, was around 2004-2006 Ford, Chrysler and GM cut development in their smaller car lines, and went into Trucks and SUV's. Then Gas Prices Skyrocketed and a Recession hit. So companies like Toyota and Honda were doing much better because they had small fuel efficient cars ready in their pipeline. It took years for the big 3 to get a good car lineup. However once again Americans want the big ones again. So they are not making small cars.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You do realize that BLS doesn't utilize any homeless figures, and it does produce the U-6 figure you mentioned. What it does do is attempt to figure out who is no longer looking for work, so they set up a well published explanation of their methodology. So how is the US playing slight of hand?...or did you mean the media, who's doing the reporting of unemployment?
To be fair from one year to the next, you need to compare apples to apples. BLS also supplies that information https://www.bls.gov/ no "slight-of-hand" involved.
Just another day in Paradise
These systems were destroyed before Boomers started retiring. They cheered on that destruction because they were making enough money that they didn't need any of it. Now they can't retire because there's nothing under them as a direct result of their own actions. They'll doubtlessly find a way to blame their kids for it.
To put this in perspective:
Every current resident of Chicago, Illinois, is on the hook for $125,000 in unfunded pension liabilities between the city, county and state. If those pensions are actually going to get paid, every resident needs to cough up an extra $125,000 over the next 30 years. And that number goes up every year, because current commitments are still not being funded. Given the income and wealth distribution in Chicago, practically that means every complete household with decent earners will need to cough up an additional $400,000 or more towards public pensions. All while not saving for their own retirement.
Now, Chicago is by far the biggest basket case, but this is not unique.
New York City is only short about $11,000 per household for pensions. But they're also short $23,000 per household for retiree health care.
Look into your own city, county, and state, and do the math. You can practically subtract the underfunded amount from the value of your home, because that's where the leeches will be looking to extract all that money from when it comes down to it.
The beginning of the end of Toys R Us was the leveraged buyout (because the company was sitting on assets, had very little debt, but had hit on a couple slow quarters in sales). Bain Capital took the company, realigned the board with their players and reshuffled the executive team. They then sold off the assets, leased them back, borrowed money to the hilt and paid off the loans they took to make the leveraged buyout. And paid themselves a lot of money because they were so brilliant. What was left was a company that might have been able to change with the market and find some way to compete with Amazon, who is cleaning house in the toy bizz right now. Instead, with sales dropping every quarter as people are buying online because they don't have time to go shopping anymore, and the company already hocked to the gills and borrowing the limit of what it can, there was nothing left with which to change strategy and compete. In the end, the Bain-led board and executives took the company into bankruptcy, closed out the last of the assets and paid themselves yet again for doing such a good job destroying the company. Maybe they can make even more selling off the brand name...
Are you describing the post-WWII boom as if it was a steady state? We made the best things because we still had factories, now we're regressing to the mean.
8 years ago was the beginning of this latest bull market. 8 years * 15,000 contributions per year does not make $400K otherwise.
The big advantage of representative democracy isn't that it consistently elects good governments. It's that it eventually gets rid of unusually bad ones. The main problem with this is cynicism and apathy -- people getting so used to bad government that they can't even entertain the thought of one being a little bit better.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So she should have saved all her money and then paid it to the nursing home instead of enjoying it? I don't think this example is an argument for saving more.
What really gets me, was around 2004-2006 Ford, Chrysler and GM cut development in their smaller car lines, and went into Trucks and SUV's. Then Gas Prices Skyrocketed and a Recession hit. So companies like Toyota and Honda were doing much better because they had small fuel efficient cars ready in their pipeline. It took years for the big 3 to get a good car lineup. However once again Americans want the big ones again. So they are not making small cars.
Do you mean to say that by shifting away from small cars, they are setting themselves up for problems later? My opinion is that oil prices will remain "low" for at least the next 3 years. The oil industry is in a steady "boom" time, oil prices don't usually go up dramatically until halfway through the "bust". And fuel economy of large vehicles is much better than it used to be. My 1/2 ton truck gets 19MPG, which is bad compared to a car but is much better than the 13MPG that the same truck got in 2008.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
my mom is one of these people. She is a hardcore trump fan and my parents both worked for 40+ years each and thought they had saved for a comfortably for retirement. Well my mom has gotten a serious medical condition and it is a real possibility that all they saved over the course of their lives could be wiped out and they will go bankrupt having to pay the medical bills that the greedy private health insurance is fighting paying at every turn. Helping your neighbor is very American, but I have no idea how conservatives with this "I got mine" attitude is benefiting my mom now that they did everything right and are about thrown out on the street for being medically bankrupt.
Only problem is with the birthrate dropping fairly significantly in the US, stopping immigration puts us in the same position China and Japan are finding themselves in - way too many older folks and way to few workers. Here, however, we don't have the social structure in most families where the kids take care of the parents. So be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.
The US leads the world in legal immigration(More than #2-5 combined), plenty to make up for the less than replacement birth rate.
Illegal immigrants are, by definition criminals, and can easily be coerced into worse crimes, assuming they are not already stealing identities and other crimes which may be necessary to support their illegal presence in this country.
I'm all for legal immigration(Wife is Canadian, and we went through the entire process), but illegal immigration is bad for both the person and the country(great for lots of criminal organizations though).
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My opinion is that oil prices will remain "low" for at least the next 3 years. The oil industry is in a steady "boom" time, oil prices don't usually go up dramatically until halfway through the "bust". And fuel economy of large vehicles is much better than it used to be. My 1/2 ton truck gets 19MPG, which is bad compared to a car but is much better than the 13MPG that the same truck got in 2008.
Moreover electric cars are reducing demand for oil. Oil output could decline and yet still there's enough supply if demand shrinks fast enough. Also as you note fuel efficiency is up overall. Demographics world wide are aging so there's less driving due to that as well. The peak oil doomsday scenarios were increased demand and dwindling supply. At this point lower supply but also lower demand looks more likely.
Or, GM passenger cars are terrible and buyers go a different way.
Yes, there are more SUVs being sold. "Crossovers" are just tall station wagons on bigger tires. However, Toyota and Honda still sell a metric fuckload of Camrys, Corollas and Civics to the point of them being in the top 10 vehicles sold including SUVs and light-duty trucks like the Ford F-Series, Chevy Silverado, and Dodge Ram.
Clearly Toyota and Honda know something that eludes GM - like how to build a car that isn't a pile of shit after 40,000 miles.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
> You can form a co-op buy the now unused equipment and start manufacturing another product or under another brand.
Are you delusional? Name the last successful car company to get started as a "coop" shoestring operation by a bunch of laid off workers. Go on, I'll wait...
Hell, look at the shit Tesla gets from everyone and they've got billions behind them.
The same scenario happened to Sears. In addition to the huge debt from their LBO, Sear experienced increased costs as their store rent rose tremendously after the LBO. Why? Because the new CEO and major private equity holder sold practically all of Sears land holdings (which included store properties) to a shell company he owned then raised the rent on the same properties. He was making a great deal of money gutting the company.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Both of those companies would be on the ropes no matter who is POTUS.
That's not what the POTUS says. He is happy to take credit, personally, for anything positive that happens in our economy.
In any case GM was done - no money to retool to build stuff people wanted. Obama gave them a pile of money but insisted basically they pay Union workers to do something. It was either sit on their hand and do nothing or build products that might not sell in the existing plants. Bascially it was failing business before and its failing business now.
No factual documentation backs up anything you've said.
On December 19, 2008, President Bush agreed to a $24.9 billion bailout using TARP: $13.4 billion for GM, $5.5 billion for Chrysler, and $5 billion for GMAC.
In response, the companies promised to fast-track development of energy-efficient vehicles and consolidate operations. GM and Ford agreed to streamline the number of brands they produced. The United Automobile Workers union agreed to accept delayed contributions to a health trust fund for retirees. It also agreed to reduce payments to laid-off workers. The three CEOs agreed to work for $1 a year and sell their corporate jets.
and
The Obama administration used the take-over to set new auto efficiency standards. That improved air quality and forced U.S. automakers to be more competitive against Japanese and German firms.
In other words, the plan was set in motion by Bush, not Obama. And Obama added terms to the deal that required the automakers to up their game, not "pay union workers to do something".
https://www.thebalance.com/aut...
Demographics world wide are aging so there's less driving due to that as well.
China in India are just now growing a middle-class. Driving will increase world-wide. FACT!.
Life is not for the lazy.
The buyout of Toys'R'Us was in 2005, Deval Patrick joined Bain Capital in 2015. Not to say he's an angel, but it is disingenuous to say he was part of this.
The conclusion that this problem is one "that liberals in particular should have capitalized on this election cycle" tells me all I need to know about the political views of the original poster.
That said? Yeah, we have some looming problems for future retirees when it comes to finances. But the people who are already nearly 30 years old and "have nothing saved for retirement" still need to look in the mirror to find who to blame. I can guarantee you (because I work with a lot of these people myself), a lot of younger people were never taught much of anything about finances and investing. Many have no idea how to balance a checkbook, and rely on regularly logging in to their bank's web site to determine how much money they've got in their account(s). They couldn't challenge their bank about an error if they had to. They just blindly trust and accept that the bank is keeping a proper record of their transactions. They've been offered 401Ks but opted out, saying they "didn't trust that the money would really be there by the time they retire anyway" or other such excuses.
The fact that many people are struggling to find and keep good paying jobs obviously doesn't help either. But the fact is, it's a lot easier to have money taken out of your paycheck, pre-tax, before you ever see it. The bellyaching about not being able to afford to let them take even 3% or 4% out for a retirement account is just FUD. If you're living SO close to the edge that 3% of your income, pre-tax, will make the difference between you surviving and not? You have bigger problems and need to re-evaluate your life choices and needs.
Personally, as a libertarian who leans financially conservative on most issues? I think it's the liberal Democrats who I'm most afraid to see trying to "fix retirement problems". They're notorious for the persistent belief that any problem can be addressed by pointing the finger at someone else with more resources, and demanding they give some of theirs up towards the goal.
When you look at how the existing Social Security system is set up? It's not even really a designated "pot" that funds go into. That's why so many other political plans involve dipping into money that was supposedly earmarked for people's retirement. Even SSI comes out of Social Security. That's a potential problem because disability payments are doled out to a lot of people who never worked long enough to contribute anything meaningful IN to the system first. And our legislation allows for practically anything imaginable to count as a disability, if you can get the right doctor to sign off on it. I once dated a girl, briefly, who was in her 20's and I discovered was collecting disability payments. I couldn't imagine why, until I found out she claimed she had "back problems" that prevented her from ever being able to hold a job. It turns out, it was some kind of issue where occasionally (maybe once a month at most?) she'd find she couldn't get up out of bed in the morning ... basically paralyzed for a while. A few hours later, it would get better and she could get up and move around again. A legitimate medical problem? Yeah, but IMO, hardly one that would keep you from being a productive member of society. Especially with all the teleworking opportunities around today, it's a better time than ever in history to find employment despite a limitation like that! A tenant in my father's apartment, a while back, was collecting disability payments because he claimed his previous cocaine addiction qualified him. You could even collect it for being too overweight, if you wanted to go that route .... How much more money would be there to ensure Social Security could pay people fairly in their retirement if it wasn't drained off by these other things?
Good point it was Bush, and that parasite Hank P. Obama just doubled down, on the stupid and made them build cars people would want even less.
No, it was primarily Bush.
The only problem with Biden’s history lesson is that the “man with steel in his spine” he referred to should have been George W. Bush, not Barack Obama. Lest we forget, it was Bush rather than Obama who initiated the government rescue of the auto companies.
https://www.newyorker.com/news...
The only thing Obama didn't do is step and and completely quash the bailout. Obama publicly supported the plan before he was elected, but the plan itself was the brainchild of the previous administration. An incoming president isn't going to kill a plan that's saving tens of thousands of American jobs. If you really blame Obama for that you aren't being honest with yourself.
Note the perspective of that article is that Biden is trying to give Obama undeserved credit for the bailout. It's actually an anti-Biden/Obama article.
Also, the bailout was a loan.
https://www.thebalance.com/aut...
You can see the fed invested ~$80B, and got back ~$70B... they lost ~$10B. Sure they lost, but it's not like this was some massive handout to GM with no strings attached. Honestly it seems like a pretty good gamble at the time considering what would be the impact to the US economy.
I doubt there would be a single example of a person who would forsake their ambition simply because they couldn't pass it on as highly liquid value.
Those that are interested in using their wealth for a legacy would find other more concrete ways to confer an advantage to their heirs. Those heirs would be advantaged, but would have no choice but to actually work to get benefit out of it, versus a trust fund which *may* have useless entitled benefits.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Actually any government seems to go bad after 8-10 years. They get complacent at the minimum. As the saying goes, government is like diapers, need to be changed regularly due to being full of shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
those aren't the things we want. It's what's being offered. The things we want (a good, meaningful life with friends and family) aren't really on the table for a lot of folks. All it takes is one family illness, picking the wrong career path or just plain being born in the rust belt and you're basically done.
You're actions don't take place in a vacuum. The Phrase "Pulling up by your bootstraps" used to be an ironic jab at wealth inequality and the general unfairness of the world. It describes a literal impossibility. Someone spent a lot of time and money to make that joke into a badge of pride for the lower class being trickled down on.
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Actually, a big part of the problem with the Honda transmissions isn't outsourcing the development, but rather that they insisted on designing and building their own transmissions rather than using someone else's design (or even just buying someone else's transmission). Like a lot of NIH syndrome, this resulted in a crappier product for no real good reason. Note this really is only a problem for their automatics - their manuals are fine.
Nissan's problems are mostly related to their CVT's. They've gotten better as the technology has matured, though the other option they've used is also dumping the CVT option on some models and going back to a conventional automatic which they've usually done a decent job with.
The biggest problem is "bigger is better" attitude when it comes to the number of gears, part of which is driven by MPG requirements. After about 6 gears you really hit the point of diminishing returns for a regular car and after that you're just making the transmission more complex and fragile for only a very modest improvement to mileage and bragging rights.