"Ed Pawlowski" > wrote in message
...
> On 8/29/2014 12:00 PM, Paul M. Cook wrote:
>
>>
>> Actually no. Terrible business decisions, shoddy products plus a hugely
>> out
>> of proportion executive compensation and pension liability is what killed
>> GM. Don't forget how when gas prices shot up GM had retooled almost its
>> entire inventory to gas guzzling cars and was suddenly caught with cars
>> nobody wanted and factories that couldn;t make the cars they did want. .
>> And they never made so much profit as when the UAW was at its peak.
>>
>
> Many reasons on both sides. Union made big demands and the auto makers
> just raised the price of the cars and passed on the added cost. That
> worked for many years when the economy was growing and jobs were
> plentiful. Buyers bought whatever the Big 3 made.

For years before the crash he UAW mad a lot of concessions including
dropping their entry level wage to 14 bucks an hour and also taking huge
hits on pensions. Yet the executive compensation liability doubled, tripled
and then quadrupled. The execs took the money saved and gave it to
themselves.

> competition from better built cars at the same or lower prices started
> their demise.

When I was a kid in the 60s it was just expected your car would fall apart
in two years. Whenever you take a snapshot of the US car industry and
compare it to the Japanese makers you see the Japanese were always on the
leading edge and the American makers were considering innovation to be
taller tail fins. WHen people realized they had een rooked it no longer
became patriotic to drive a 4 ton monstrosity that fell apart before you
drove it home for the first time.

The rest is history.

>



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