Cars That Go Boom: Detroit's Big Three & Me

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Originally Posted by Pugwash

If you're going to use examples, get your figures right. The 3% figure is completely outdated, and if you want to talk "big three", Apple is the third-largest computer company in the US. It's also third-largest US music retailer and the third-largest mobile phone supplier in the world.

Apple is one of the Big Three in every industry it is in.

Your lack of research, Mister Apples and Automobiles, means I'll not only ignore your opinion, but I'll feel entitled to ridicule your premise and openly laugh at you.

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Pug, did you read the whole article, not just the excerpt? I took a paragraph from it that shakes up your mind a little but it is not what the whole thing is about. It is to make some think of the terms under which some judge the automobile industry of America. He has no vendetta against Apple or any of its sycophants. But his ties to automobile industry in Detroit are strong and he manages to maintain a lot of objectivity in lieu of that. And he mentioned Apple because some tech blogger stated that cars should be manufactured like electronics which is the dumbest thing I've have heard thus far in the domestic automotive debate.

Either way, I believe he's got the sentiment correct. In the 1980s, Apple did have a great deal of market share in computers and now have very little in comparison with their heyday. With domestic automakers, the slide in market share is not nearly as bad and yet people are "writing them off like bad check," which he states in his article. After emailing a friend who is a media analyst with Capgemini to double check, the music selling and cell phone businesses are NOT Apple's core product lines, although they are a chunk of revenue similar in a way that Playstation sales, while not being a core product, provide almost a quarter of revenue for Sony. Apple's main business, selling computers, is what is being compared to the main business of the auto companies, which is selling cars. "Ancillary" (and I use this term very loosely) businesses that provide positive cash flow and large amounts of revenue, e.g. their captive finance companies, don't negate the fact that their main business is not as robust as it once was.

He's simply saying that measuring other companies using similar guidelines used on American automakers would make other companies look far less like the golden child and more like a red-headed step child.

I say bail them out for the good of the economy, but completely purge all management and executives, and divest all board members. These idiots cannot be allowed to keep lining their pockets by driving companies into the toilet. Hell, anybody could do that, so give some body else a chance. I've got my resume ready. Hell, I took a startup from the starting line to a 12 million dollar a year company, and we started out with $90,000.00 and grew the company organically, doing nothing that wasn't profitable, and incurred no debt to achieve growth. From zero to $12million annually took 6 years, but we've never had a lay off, we've never missed payroll, and we've never not grown a healthy % year over year. I'll put my resume up against any of these cronies any day of the week. They are thieves, nothing less.

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Originally Posted by Posh

After emailing a friend who is a media analyst with Capgemini to double check, the music selling and cell phone businesses are NOT Apple's core product lines, although they are a chunk of revenue similar in a way that Playstation sales, while not being a core product, provide almost a quarter of revenue for Sony. Apple's main business, selling computers, is what is being compared to the main business of the auto companies, which is selling cars.

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Q4 2008, the latest figures we have. 55% of Apple's Revenue was iPhones and iPods. A mere 31% of Apple's revenue was computers. This is why they changed their name from "Apple Computer Inc." to "Apple Inc." in 2007.

Your friend at CapGemini is about a year out of date.

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Originally Posted by Pugwash

Q4 2008, the latest figures we have. 55% of Apple's Revenue was iPhones and iPods. A mere 31% of Apple's revenue was computers. This is why they changed their name from "Apple Computer Inc." to "Apple Inc." in 2007.

Your friend at CapGemini is about a year out of date.

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Not exactly. Sarah Kaplan, a management professor at the Wharton School, suggested that Apple's name change doesn't have any direct impact on the business itself, but it does accomplish the following psychological effects: It signals to employees the company's long-term strategy, it clarifies the marketing message and it prods investors to compare Apple to consumer electronics firms rather than just computer makers.

Wharton's market professor, Peter Fader, said that Apple's name change is the equivalent of waving a white flag in the PC market. He states, "How many Apple computers has the iPod sold?," alluding to the so-called "halo effect" where people who buy iPods tend to migrate to Apple's computers, which hasn't happened in any significant way at all.

The domestic automaker's core business, selling cars, makes them money worldwide and it is in U.S. where things have been hardest because of legacy costs. I am actually curious as to whether the domestics are using this crisis to off load the pensions systems to the federal government, which they have wanted to do for some time. A bankruptcy would almost guarantee they would be able to, I think. It's all very tricky. LOL

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Originally Posted by Posh

Not exactly. [...]

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Huh? You said "not exactly" and then agreed with me. That's funny. :)

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Originally Posted by Pugwash

Huh? You said "not exactly" and then agreed with me. That's funny. :)

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Not exactly.

I support the auto bailout far more than even the bank bailouts. Of course that's in hindsight. Had the banks actually used the bailout money to thaw credit for average people the way it was sold it wouldve been fine. But they didn't. Now they won't even tell us what they did with it. The auto industry employs average working people and I just don't think we can let that industry die. And if an auto worker makes $70 k a year good for them. We don't scrutinize the financial workers or lawyers or atletes or actors on what they get paid. Its class warfare

Posh,

I have been away for a while - and now you have your OWN forum - COOL!!!

I read this thread with open eyes and understand the thoughts and reasons both for and against....

But what has prompted me to post is an intersting article in the SMH - Yes it applies to Australia - but considering that when you sneeze (the US - not you ;) ) we catch a cold - I thought it is sort of relevant.....

The biggest enemy of "working families" is not the financial crisis. It is the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and his offensive and simplistic suggestion that middle Australia should show restraint in wage negotiations so as not to compromise their jobs.

People are not morally obliged to remedy problems not of their doing. Families struggling to afford the necessities of modern life made no contribution to the financial problems. They owe nothing to the rest of community when it comes to wage negotiations.

The suggestion that more money for bosses equals more jobs for workers breaks the laws of economics and human nature. Trickle-down economics has long been discredited; there are simply too many greedy sponges at the top. Rudd's call for wage restraint is a misguided justification for employers to exploit the vulnerable by undervaluing the toils of their labour.

Moreover, imposing the same wage disciplines on rich and poor is a contemptible case of economic discrimination. Rich and poor come from vastly different starting points to attain human flourishing. Even slight reductions in purchasing power are felt far more heavily by those who are wanting. Being forced to sell the family home tends to ache a lot more than having to think twice before choosing to fly first class or business class on the next holiday.

Rudd's decision to defer a wage rise for federal politicians is a meaningless gesture for setting the tone for how many other Australians should behave. The financial pressures experienced by politicians with their $100,000 plus annual salaries and brimming superannuation entitlements - most of which, unlike for other Australians, are guaranteed - are negligible compared with those faced by many battling to save the roof over their heads.

But won't pay rises for the middle class encourage high-income earners to go hard in wage negotiations? No, they already do that. They always have, and they always will.

Even if there was evidence to suggest pay rises for the middle class would damage the economy, workers should still bargain for all they are worth. Admittedly, the reaches of our moral and civic duties are not confined to redressing problems of our doing. In some cases individuals need to help others or make sacrifices for the good of the community.

However, circumstances requiring such benevolence are rare. They are defined by the maxim of positive duty, which prescribes that we must help others in serious trouble, when assistance would immensely help them at no or little inconvenience to ourselves.

That is why it is repugnant to refuse to throw a rope to a person drowning near a pier, but why we are entitled to decline to allow a homeless person to live in our spare bedroom.

It is also why developing countries are entitled to refuse to adopt greenhouse targets. Global warning has been caused solely by Western nations, whose use of cheap energy increased their prosperity, while at the same time refusing to share the largesse with the largely hungry Third World. People in developing nations are no less entitled to improve their lot.

Why should hungry people in the Third World care if their use of fossil fuel risks making future people less prosperous? Current destitution bites more harshly than potential future discomfort.

On the economic home front, middle Australia is the very constituency feeling the economic pinch and is already immensely inconvenienced by rising costs. That is why it is impertinent for Rudd to urge it to show wage restraint. Middle Australians need - and are entitled to - every cent they can get in wage increases.

Moreover, they should not only be leaning on their employers to improve their lot. The Government also needs to step in. Most Australians will welcome the recently mooted tax cuts later this year. But their problem - as always - is that they will most benefit the rich.

No Australian living below the poverty line should pay tax. It is mindless, especially as they are then subsidised by the welfare system. It is bureaucratic, unjustifiable nonsense. About 10 per cent of Australians are living below the poverty line (about $700 a week for a family of four).

Instead of finding new ways to betray the constituency that gave him power, Rudd could contemplate one good reason for not increasing the tax-free threshold to the poverty line...