MECHANICS NEED JOBS TOO, DRIVE AMERICAN

You might wonder, is everyone in the Detroit area as fat, lazy, and stupid as Michael Moore? YES!

This article details the failing of the American auto industry. It is titled "Mechanics need jobs too, Drive American". First of all, I will have you know that although I am a gun-toting, chewing, and generally conservative American, I steadfastly refuse to drive an American car. This article will tell you why. The first thing that you must know about American cars is that they are just plain shitty cars. They are undependable, cheesy and shoddily manufactured. There a multitude of reasons for this but the first is the American autoworkers themselves. One of my main critiques of the US auto industry is their insistence on building cars in the worst city in America, Detroit. Can there possibly be a worse city than Detroit?? It is the epicenter of crime, filth, hopelessness and laziness. These companies have no choice but to hire illiterate pieces of shit because they are domiciled in Detroit. One statistic that I was able to find about Detroit was the high school dropout rate. In 2002-2003, only 44% of Detroit students graduated from High School. Source (http://www.freep.com/news/education/reportcard5e_20041105.htm)

This is completely absurd. Any city that is that inept cannot be trusted to house one of our most important industries. One can only imagine the interviews held by GM, Ford and Chrysler in the event that they actually hire people. I would be willing to bet that it is an exercise in futility to find young people who can read and write. Any company is only as good as its workers and Lord knows that the employees of these companies are incapable of competent work and this is clear in the way that these piece of shit cars fall apart promptly upon leaving the dealership.

Incompetence of the residents of Detroit is one reason why American cars suck but another is unionized labor. By now, you should know how I feel about union workers in any industry. They are lazy, fat, incompetent, and generally not worth their weight in donuts. Unions have a stranglehold on the US auto industry and just like every other major American union; they are leading their workers to the unemployment line. Their unreasonable requirements have created an entitlement system that has permanently crippled the corporations that they are involved with. Case in point, General Motors (the largest automaker in the world, for now) will pay 5.6 billion dollars this year in health care entitlements to retired workers. $5.6 billion dollars!!! What the fuck, are these numbers real?? Are you kidding me?? And this company is supposed to compete with rival automakers while paying the fucking gross domestic product of a third world nation to fat, worthless, retired union workers?!? Nice business plan GM, and good job to the union fucks that have done their best to destroy any chance that this once great company had in competing with the likes of Toyota, Hyundai, or VW/Audi.

That is not the worst news believe or not. The ratio of retired workers to active workers is 2.5 to 1. This means simply that there are not enough workers to support the entitlements owed to the retirees. Wow, this sounds strangely like the upcoming Social Security disaster. You would think that the liberal fucks in Congress would see how this is destroying GM and do something or allow George to do something, but they are too worried about giving people handouts to address this issue. It is ironic to me that the very organizations that support the Dumbocrats (for some reason, spell check keeps rejecting this word, stupid liberals at Microsoft!!) are bound for the unemployment line, of course, all the while blaming the free-market genius of the GOP for their plight. The worst part of it is that the idiots (illiterate Detroiters) will believe them and come in droves to support the very idiots who created the disaster that led to their firing.

Dumbocrats just have no clue!! In the highly unlikely event that they win an election, it is due to their addiction to handouts and free lunches. "Vote for us, we will give you free healthcare, government sponsored pensions and limitless porn", it is a fucking joke; it makes me sick thinking about it......... I digress. Back to the auto industry...... I also was able to find, in my peerless research that in 2003, GM sunk $18.5 billion dollars into the pension fund that supports the retirement of their retired workers. $18.5 BILLION DOLLARS!! What? Considering that GM lost $839 million in the first quarter of this year and only made $3 billion last year, $18.5 billion is a shitload of money. At a time when the company is struggling to keep pace with the auto industry as a whole, it is sinking all of its profits and more into a pension system to pay for workers retirement. That is incredible!! As a shareholder of GM through multiple mutual funds, I would like to send my deepest regards (and a fucking pipe bomb) to the United Auto Workers. Thanks guys!!!!

Not even fancy camera angles and lens filters can make the 2005 Monte Carlo look good. Who designed this? They should be deported!

One more reason that the American auto industry is floundering is competition. That’s right libs, good old-fashioned free market competition. Toyota is the strongest competitor to the US auto manufacturers. Toyota has cars and trucks in every category, and some of the largest margins in the auto industry. The Camry has been the top seller in the US for five of the last six years and American car companies have fired back with the Chevy Malibu, the Ford 500 and the Chrysler Stratus. Needless to say, those brands have done nothing to beat back the peerless Camry. While I think the Camry is a boring car that lacks any type of personality, no one can deny that it beats the piss out of its so-called American competition. Toyota recently passed DamlerChrysler as the third largest seller of vehicles here in the US and within two years, Toyota will pass Ford Motor for second. What can be done about this? Well, unfortunately I don’t think anything can be done about it. We have recently seen how American companies plan to regain market share. The “employee discount” while wildly successful for GM, it is not a long-term solution. When a company’s only plan of attack is to cut prices and undercut profits for market share, its end is near.

If GM was able to spend some money for some honest research and development, it may have a chance, but since they are crippled with legacy costs, they cannot. In order for GM, Ford and to a lesser extent DamlerChrysler to make a comeback they need to look at the example of Harley-Davidson. In the 1980s, Harley was left for dead, bankrupt and unable to compete with the superior products of the Japanese motorcycle makers. After filing bankruptcy, Harley emerged with a plan. First, create demand for their products by producing a quality, differentiated product. Instead of copying what the Kawasaki’s of the world were doing, they started producing motorcycles that were so different from the competition’s choices, people started wanting to buy their bikes. We all know how successful this has been, as a matter of fact, Harley-Davidson now has a larger market capitalization than that of GM. This means if you took all the outstanding shares of Harley and multiplied them by the stock price it would be worth more than GM’s total. This is, of course, because investors expect profit growth from Harley while investors have significant doubt about GM’s ability to grow earnings thus leading to a depressed market value.

The only solution to this problem is to make some difficult Viking choices. My recommended course of action for American car companies is the following three items.

1. Declare bankruptcy to relieve the pressure on earnings from the legacy costs of pensions and health care. Yes, former autoworkers, this will suck for you, but I don’t care, you should have never received these benefits in the first place and you were lucky to have gotten any of it. I am sure that there are plenty of Wal-Marts that would love to have you as an employee. The market for crotchety, lazy, unmotivated workers is immense………..oh wait, maybe not……..YOU ARE FUCKED!!!!
   
   
2. Immediately replace all pension system with defined-contribution plans that place the onus on the worker to save for retirement. This system should be adopted not only by auto manufactures but all state, federal and local governments. In my Viking view, no one is entitled to shit, so if you don’t elect to participate in the 401(k) program, well then enjoy your measly Social Security check, oh shit, we are going to eliminate that too, so get ready for the poor house, you degenerate fucks.
   
   
3. Emerge from bankruptcy with a real plan of attack. Stop trying to make cars that everyone wants, the margins on such products are minimal. Cut production significantly, lay off most of your workforce, and start producing cars that are well made, original and different. Take advantage of rising concerns about fuel prices by using all the money saved from cutting pension costs and spend it on development of alternative-energy cars. Produce a fuel-cell car, make the entire line of products hybrid, and talk about how responsible it is to drive such cars. And most of all, stop relying on the SUV and truck for your profits. Stop production on these worthless vehicles and start running advertisements that disparage driving these gas-guzzling penis extensions.

I know that this plan will take intelligent planning, intense research and, most of all, some serious balls. If American car corporations do this they can emerge as viable companies again. Of course, they will not heed my advice and they will continue to produce shitty cars and wasteful SUV’s. If I could give any of my ever-growing legion of readers advice, I would say start short-selling GM and Ford stock so that when these stock prices continue their fall into an Enron-like abyss, you can profit from it and buy a fucking Toyota, Mercedes, BMW or Lexus. Or buy a car repair place and profit from idiots who bought these rust buckets and laugh yourself all the way to the bank, and once again, go buy a real car from a respectable Japanese, Korean, or German corporation. Thanks for reading and next time you are in Detroit (oh that’s right, no one with a fifth-grade education would ever go there) laugh at the auto workers and know that soon you will be supporting them as they go to never-ending job re-education classes and spit huge wads of chew on them when you see them at Wal-Mart handing out Werther’s Original hard candies!!!!

-arthur@arthurshall.com