Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmy
I don't know what the prius #'s are since the plant is pretty new, but the Toyota Sienna is assembled in the U.S. w/80% of the parts made here. The Ford fusion is assembled in Mexico with 20% American made parts. My original point was that it may make us feel good to buy a Ford based on the past, but they aren't usually American made anymore.
People didn't by American cars cause they made junk. The bailout, however one looks at it, saved enormous amounts of jobs and prevented huge economic losses in the end. Hard for anyone not to support that.
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Are the American workers who assemble Siennas unionized? I'd like to know ther answer to that. I bet not, because of those Toyota workers were in the UAW, Toyotas would be (1) more expensive and (2) less reliable.
I'm opposed to the bailouts. It's OK when bad companies go under, that's how people learn. Consider my own example. I work for a small specialty lines insurance company, and we compete regularly with AIG. We are always trying to get more business from AIG. Well, had AIG gone under, we would have been able to grow like crazy. But the feds took my money and gave it to AIG. And when my company competed with AIG on some accounts, we could not believe how low their prices were. When I asked brokers how AIG could possibly bid so low, we were always told that AIG was using TARP money, which wasn't theirs, so they were being reckless with it.
To recap. My company did nothing wrong, but AIG did. In response, the feds took my money and gave it to AIG, and AIG used that money against my company.
How is that fair? How do we explain that to our kids when we tell them, that good decisions are rewarded, and bad decisions have consequences? AIG was the reckless and irresponsible, and for that, they get REWARDED with a taxpayer-funded competitive advantage? Go ahead and defend that.
I don't get it. I'm not sophisticated enough, I guess...