The FIX for GM's problem is two fold.

[Vincardog]

1: Get some vision and and innovation in their product line.
2: Get the US Government to offer Universal Health Care.
Their biggest financial issue is health care. Why should US businesses work at this huge disadvantage? It is only FAIR their competition has universal health care. Why do you think the Japans cars are so cheap? They don't have to factor in the cost of a bloated insurance industry.

[enid602]

1. GM

40% of the largest (Fortune 100) companies didn't pay ANY US taxes last year. Foreign industrialized countries would not have been able to offer universal healthcare if their corporations paid no taxes. Somehow, I think GM would snivel either way.

[Cactus44]

2. Interesting point.

And that really is a problem going forward.

[Vincardog]

3. I do not really give a flying Fck about GM BUT US citizens deserve

Universal health care, I just see this as a way to get Big Business and the Republicans behind the Idea.

[ComerPerro]

4. Or they could do what Wal-Mart does

and force the taxpayers to subsidize everything that their low wages can't provide.

[Vincardog]

5. That has all the costs of universal health care and none of the benefits

[ComerPerro]

8. I know. Sick, isn't it?

[pnorman]

6. Here's something along that line:

GM’s Healthcare Double Standard
Bad ideology trumps good business
By Dave Lindorff

What a difference a border makes. General Motors executives say soaring health costs in their U.S. plants are forcing them to seek health benefits give-backs from unionized workers, yet they insist national healthcare is not an appropriate solution for America. As company spokeswoman Sherri Woodruff puts it, “GM thinks there has to be closer cooperation between the government and the private sector, but we don’t advocate a single-payer system for the U.S.”

Yet just across the Detroit River in Ontario, the company’s subsidiary—like the subsidiaries of Ford, DaimlerChrysler and other U.S. firms————strongly endorses Canada’s national health system.

“The Canadian plan has been a significant advantage for investing in Canada,” says GM Canada spokesman David Patterson, noting that in the United States, GM spends $1,400 per car on health benefits. Indeed, with the provinces sharing 75 percent of the cost of Canadian healthcare, it’s no surprise that GM, Ford and Chrysler have all been shifting car production across the border at such a rate that the name “Motor City” should belong to Windsor, not Detroit.

Just two years ago, GM Canada’s CEO Michael Grimaldi sent a letter co-signed by Canadian Autoworkers Union president Buzz Hargrave to a Crown Commission considering reforms of Canada’s 35-year-old national health program that said, “The public healthcare system significantly reduces total labour costs for automobile manufacturing firms, compared to their cost of equivalent private insurance services purchased by U.S.-based automakers.” That letter also said it was “vitally important that the publicly funded healthcare system be preserved and renewed, on the existing principles of universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness and public administration,” and went on to call not just for preservation but for an “updated range of services.” CEOs of the Canadian units of Ford and DaimlerChrysler wrote similar encomiums endorsing the national health system.
>
>

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2081/

pnorman

[Freddie Stubbs]

7. That doesn't address 'Japanese' cars built in this country

Many cars with Japanese names on them are actually built in the United States, just like the American cars.

[Vincardog]

9. SEE 1: Get some vision and and innovation in their product line.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. what about innovation and vision? They could do great trying those.

But, this company decided 4 years ago to concentrate on big, bigger, biggerer. biggest, and biggerest. Yes, I know, some of those words don't make sense, but in that fashion, they mimic the GM long term strategy. Supersized SUVs? Hummers without the orgasm? PLUS, they drop-kicked their promising low fuel, high efficiency studies. Just stopped them. No more funding, no more development. Man, that is like NASA trashing their Apollo plans to save filing space. Oh. Wait, NASA did that, too.

One of the earliest plants they will close is one that concentrates on the smallest and most efficient cars they make. There are hotel parking lots that are hiding thousands of unsold Humvees. The Humvee III looks like it drives - like shit. For all their alleged muscle-damaged brain-bound (or is that the other way around) looks, a Humvee does not handle minor collisions well, or cheaply. It is show, all show. A big, heavy, obese waste of space that perfectly defines and describes today's GM management.

Decades ago, "Body By Fischer" meant elegance, design quality and beautiful lines and sexy curves. GM replaced that division with a new management and administrative approach: "Brains by Playskool."

Hey, I dated a cheerleader who fit those descriptions.

[ducque]

11. but, but ...

have a look at the current trend.

Toyota just made a decision regarding their new RAV4 plant in North America. Alabama had poll position, as Toyota already has a plant there.

However, Toyota opted to build the plant in Ontario, and they were very explicit why they did so:

1) Many existing Alabama workers are close to illiterate. Toyota has had to come up with special illustrated work manuals for the workers who can't read -- at great expense.

Toyota tried to make a deal with the state: the state would rescind some of the state-tax cuts for the wealthy, Toyota would give-back some of their tax benefits, and the case would go into worker education. **Nothing doing**. And this was two years ago.

2) Canadian workers are already covered by health insurance. This is a cost advantage of over $1000 per vehicle produced.

3) Canadian workers are absent less often.

Toyota's decision was "easy".