Monday, December 22, 2008

Top 10 Reasons 'Bama is Better Off Than Michigan

From the Birmingham (AL) News

HT: Joseph Rich

12 Comments:

At 12/22/2008 10:23 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

With concrete reporting like this when should we expect your current employer to change to Univ. of Alabama-Birmingham?

 
At 12/22/2008 12:35 PM, Blogger QT said...

It isn't football season but hockey season. The Detroit Red Wings have won more Stanley Cups that any other club in recent years...not everything is better in Alabama.

It's ironic that unionization always seem to pit one group against one another. If it isn't union vs. non-union, it's workers bumping other workers to avoid layoff. Now, we have Americans pitted against other Americans.

Isn't it time the Big 3 actually accept responsibility for their decline in marketshare. You can't outlaw competition and history seems to indicate that sanctions/boycotts are usually ineffective.

How effective is a handful of angry Michigan residents refusing to buy peaches from Alabama? Peaches are sold across the U.S. and even exported to Canada.

 
At 12/22/2008 3:34 PM, Blogger juandos said...

"It's ironic that unionization always seem to pit one group against one another"...

Hmmm, QT you bring up a great point and as a 30+ year union man this has been something I've harped on since the beginning of being a union member...

It just doesn't pay off...

How about cities competing with each other for being the next site for a new auto plant?

What does this sort of practice cost and does it pay off in the long run?

I really don't know...

"With concrete reporting like this when should we expect your current employer to change to Univ. of Alabama-Birmingham?"...

Well now anon @ 10:23 AM you bring up a good point...

There is always a lot of column inches and bandwidth being spent on the, "evils" of big pharma, big oil, and so on and so forth...

How come there's never anything (or much of anything) being reported on, 'big university' other than the whining complaint about how they need more money...

I don't know how valid the following is from College Board:

Over the past decade, published tuition and fees have risen at an average rate of 4.2% per year after inflation at public four-year institutions, compared to 4.1% in the preceding decade and 2.4% from 1978-79 to 1988-89.

There is some good news though according to the Baltimore Sun/WSJ: More families move to lock in tuition rates with 529s

 
At 12/22/2008 5:55 PM, Blogger QT said...

Gentlemen,

Shouldn't one also make a distinction between selection and opinion? These posts are intended to promote debate rather than reflect the opinions of the blog host.

One notes that MP has not posted any comments aside from a link to Archibald's "rattling the bars of the cage" style article. Are we able to discern his opinion from this? Seems like tea leaf reading to me.

 
At 12/22/2008 7:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

QT,

That the Big Three ever existed was an anomaly of a pent-up demand for autos and a decimated industrial world after WWII. Fully competitive and mature markets do not have one manufacturer with over 50% of the market. You would not expect a baseball player to bat .500 year-after-year would you? The drop in market share was a predictable event for anyone who has studied business, so we might as well quit pointing fingers over it.

The trick will be for whoever exists to be able to make a profit with say 8-18% of the market with 6 to 10 players in the game. Just as with our personal finances with income usually reducing after retirement, not saving for future expenses often has disastrous results. The UAW retiree health care expenses should have already been vested just like the pensions were. GM stated under oath in the VEBA trial that cleared its last appeal in U.S. court last September that the retirees’ health care benefit was promised to them at company expense when they retired. Of course, we could say that GM should not have done that or that the UAW should not have asked, but that does not alter the fact that BOTH sides agreed. That’s how big business, Social Security, and Medicare operated in the 20th century.

So where does that leave us now that GM is broke? Screwed. It’s mind-boggling to me that President Bush had to pull our cookies out of the fire. To think I have to send him a Christmas card and cancel my tri-annual trip to Senator Bob Corker’s Nashville this year is ironic :)

We will do what it takes to survive, I know we make excellent scapegoats, but I can assure you that unions are not the cause of all the evil in the world.

 
At 12/22/2008 8:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Frigid Blue

 
At 12/22/2008 9:10 PM, Blogger sethstorm said...


We will do what it takes to survive, I know we make excellent scapegoats, but I can assure you that unions are not the cause of all the evil in the world.

There are some who would rather use that to knock off three competitors via Congress's Southern members.

When they make more than the proverbial golf cart and make something at the performance per dollar only found from the Big Three - then they have a case.

Otherwise, it's just them using the scapegoat of the unions or the management to force the hand of Detroit's Big Three.

 
At 12/22/2008 10:15 PM, Blogger QT said...

GM lost 6.9B USD in the last quarter. With all due respect, it is difficult to imagine that GM can completely retool all its factories with federal funding.

Problems at GM go well beyond the UAW. The scale is impressive.

Look forward to being wrong about GM but it doesn't look great from where I'm sitting.

 
At 12/23/2008 8:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Roll, Tide, Roll
Around the Bowl'
Down the Hole
Roll, Tide, Roll

 
At 12/23/2008 9:02 AM, Blogger juandos said...

What the new cars will look like once Congress gets full control of the American auto industry...

BTW just where did all that bailout money go?

 
At 12/23/2008 11:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Michigan's future is Subsistence farming.
Already many vacant lots have been converted to cabbage patches

 
At 12/23/2008 1:07 PM, Blogger QT said...

1,

Gotta love those cars.

Interesting piece on the bailout money. Did you catch this one regarding Obama?

 

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