GM Govt. Bailout?

[stuffy]

Originally Posted by GeneW

Please..... you make it sound like the US invaded Canada.

It's not our fault that Canadians elected to concentrate power into the hands of "Deputy Ministers", who then proceeded to beat down your domestic industry. If you'd been more laissez faire up there your Auto industries could have remained strong and competed globally.

Heck, maybe we Americans would be making Canadian cars or parts for same instead of Vice Versa.


As far as "resurrecting", you cannot look back. You don't resurrect anything, you create new opportunities. If you all want to make your own cars that's cool, except of course how do you keep all of those greedy grasping Politicians out of the way?

Alberta's Governor wants to levy his own tax on oil derived from tar sands. Just because, as Dillinger said, "I rob banks because that's where the money is". A car making plant is an incredible source of tax revenue for a greedy politician.

We have the same problem down here. Too many greedy grasping fingers want to poke into someone else's pies. They get elected every so often so they figure they have the public behind them. If the public knew how these birds interfere in their livelihoods I don't think they'd be so popular.

Gene

fyi, alberta has a premier, not a governor. are you talking about alberta's desire to increase the royalties paid by the oil companies to the province?

canada never had many domestic auto manufacturers, our auto industry was always tied in with the u.s. auto industry, at least the past 60 years or more anyway.
and before free trade we had the auto pact which guaranteed canadian jobs relative to how many cars canadians purchased from the big 3.

not sure what our governments have done to stymie the canadian auto industry,
the u.s. auto manufaturers have recieved the corporate welfare handouts from the ontario government as well (in an effort to save jobs apparently), so i guess we've been helping to prop up these incompetent foreign companies in our own small way.

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by stuffy

fyi, alberta has a premier, not a governor. are you talking about alberta's desire to increase the royalties paid by the oil companies to the province?

The semantics of your response indicate that the people of Alberta want more for their oil and that the Premier (thanks for the correction) is just speaking on behalf of the people - and not his own interests and benefactors as a politician. I've personally long since ceased indulging the fiction that politicians represent me, but for many a vote is an investment in the System.

The oil doesn't belong to Alberta nor to the people. The oil belongs to whoever gets it out of the ground, before that time it's just useless muck sitting beneath someone's land.

Raise the price of doing business high enough, or hobble a business with useless feel good regulation and the business doesn't get done like it has been today. Sometimes it doesn't get done at all. One can vote, shout or stage protests but the books gotta balance. Often it's not greed by simple necessity, you cannot run forever at a loss.

I am willing to bet that Tar Sand operations will be grossly curtailed in Alberta in any case because of low world market prices. Raising the taxes (or royalties) just makes it a little bit tougher to keep the operations going.

Originally Posted by stuffy

not sure what our governments have done to stymie the canadian auto industry

Probably nothing in particular. The US hasn't had a new automobile company of any big size since American Motors, which was dismembered as part of the Chrysler bailout in the 1980s. It's really really hard to build big companies in the US and probably in Canada too. Once the concern reaches a certain size politics enter into the picture. This has been ongoing in the US since the 1920s.

One exception in the US was Micosoft, which gained its size in part because of a partnership with IBM.

Interestingly enough, Canada did have a nice tractor concern going, Cockshutt. They were bought out by Minneapolis Moline decades ago. MM was bought out and buried by White in the 1970s in part because their Guaranteed Benefit Pension was too tempting a target. Later White was bought out and buried by AGCO, which I think does not have any domestic models.

Gene