If you can't afford to have employees and you can't make a product

[SoCalDem]

that people will buy,and you can't honor promises made to current & former employees and you can't make a profit....well

maybe in a capitalist society, you don't deserve to be in business..

Maybe Ford's time has come and gone..and GM's and many other companies..

How is it that for many years these companies did quite well? and so did their employees??

but then the Dow Jones was hovering in the 2-3K range, and there was "government interference" in the rules & regs..

and corporations paid high taxes back then too..

How many republican administrations did it take to unravel it all?? Not many.

[Atman]

1. Not if you're a republican.

If you can't make money and you can't pay your employees, and you don't have a product anyone wants, then hell...you're just like the Bush administration!

[napi21]

9. Noooo, the Shrub admin. hires you! OR......

They give you a great new gov't contract that'll keep you going till the war's over!

[NMDemDist2]

2. health care is taking all of them out of business

and hurting the people too

we spend more per capita with a less healthy populace than any other Industrialized country in the world

it's a disgrace!

[blonndee]

3. I'm highly sympathetic to Ford employees, but this does remind me

of an essay by Thomas Friedman that my class just read:

"As Toyota Goes ...
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 17, 2005

So I have a question: If I am rooting for General Motors to go bankrupt and be bought out by Toyota, does that make me a bad person?

It is not that I want any autoworker to lose his or her job, but I certainly would not put on a black tie if the entire management team at G.M. got sacked and was replaced by executives from Toyota. Indeed, I think the only hope for G.M.'s autoworkers, and maybe even our country, is with Toyota. Because let's face it, as Toyota goes, so goes America.

Having Toyota take over General Motors - which based its business strategy on building gas-guzzling cars, including the idiot Hummer, scoffing at hybrid technology and fighting Congressional efforts to impose higher mileage standards on U.S. automakers - would not only be in America's economic interest, it would also be in America's geopolitical interest.

<snip>

Diffusing Toyota's hybrid technology is one of the keys to what I call "geo-green." Geo-greens seek to combine into a single political movement environmentalists who want to reduce fossil fuels that cause climate change, evangelicals who want to protect God's green earth and all his creations, and geo-strategists who want to reduce our dependence on crude oil because it fuels some of the worst regimes in the world.

full op-ed at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17friedman.html?ex=1158465600&en=c6bc29f04c6b419e&ei=5070

bugmenot passwords available at http://www.bugmenot.com/

[Ready4Change]

8. Well put.

.

[orpupilofnature57]

4. But if you don't produce anything ,just invest in misery and want ,up 13%

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Adapt or die

That's why fundies hate evolution. They know they can't compete.

[Ready4Change]

6. Too much attention to their stockholders...

Not enough to their customers.

They continued making, pushing and selling trucks, trucks, more and larger trucks. That's what the stock holders wanted. No need to waste profits looking ahead, seeing the countless reasons gas would become more expensive. No need to examine how a truck-only mentality ignored how advances in smaller cars where continuing unabated. No need to consider what this would mean in 5 or 10 years. MAKE THOSE PROFITS NOW!

So now, trucks are rusting on the lots. Foreign makes of smaller, more efficient or more advanced cars are making mincemeat of Fords midsize vehicles. Yet the stock holders still scream for more profits. More! MORE! So the white and blue collar workers are led to the chopping block to satiate the stockholders, and the CEO's make apologetic speaches, or steadfastly determined speaches about how Ford will emerge stronger and leaner from this experience, all while knowing THEIR golden parachutes are waiting, secure and snug, just in case.

The only, one and only, Ford I would currently consider buying is the new Mustang. The only other American corporate built cars are (maybe) the Magnum (if I wanted a station wagon, which I don't) or the GTO, which go figure, as from Australia.

The American car corporations RELIANCE on "Buy American" is destroying them. They deserve most of the setbacks they've sloughed off onto their employees, and those employees should quit and go work for Toyota or Honda.

[AX10]

10. There is a strong arguement for privatly owned firms.

[AX10]

11. There are American made cars that I like:

such as the Buick Lucerne and LaCrosse, the Corvette, and the Chrysler 300M.

[Ready4Change]

12. Ah, I missed one.

The new Corvettes good too, if that were the sort of car I were shopping for. Heck, if I were in the market for something for twice the $$$'s I'd look over the 'Vette. But I'd also be looking at the Lotus Elise, which I think could be my "money is no object" car, and which I think would woo me away from the 'Vette.

[Sal Minella]

7. I heard a Ford spokesman say, "Americans need to buy more Ford cars."

and that would fix the problem. It's all the silly Americans' fault for not buying enough Fords!

Wouldn't you think it might occur to one of those overpaid suits that Ford should try building vehicles Americans WANT to buy??? Just a thought.

[kestrel91316]

13. It's all because of the Clenis, you know...........