I would take a 300k redundancy and 4 years to find another job in a second if it was offered to me tomorrow.
Autoline Daily (US) speak for about a minute on the end of Holden's manufacturing and engineering, noting it is positive the design arm of Holden will continue. They mention the end of Ford's manufacturing and wonder how long before Toyota follow. They say all this will sadness, they aren't sharing the news to other Americans with any joy. They predict the vehicles Holden make that GM global wants to retain will be made in North America (and by that they mean Canada). 1st minute and a half of the 8 min video. Posting just the link for anyone interested, the rest is on Honda, VW group and some US-specific news. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itw0ezTTKQI
Rather than saying "we'll agree to disagree" I urge you to read Bastiat and find a flaw with it's core arguments and/or with the principle that division of labour is beneficial. I tried to be quite specific about what I wrote. Globalisation is not to blame for the obvious negatives inflicted on indigenous peoples. State-created war, genocide, welfare and the failure to obtain true private property rights are what has created problems for those not engaged in the economy. (Transmission of disease by people with minimal understanding of the causes and cures of such at the time isn't quite the same thing of course.)
Might be a good idea to wait a few years and see how all this horrible news pans out? Wonder what the RE industry are going to do now with all this bad news going around?
An Australian court on Thursday blocked Toyota Motor Corp from holding an employee vote on proposed contract changes, dealing a blow to the company as it seeks to cut costs and decide its manufacturing future in the country. The Federal Court of Australia upheld a complaint filed by four employees that Toyota could not change its work agreement until it expires in March 2015, Toyota said in a statement. Toyota Australia president and CEO Max Yasuda said he was disappointed with the court decision. "We believe that we are within our rights to vary our workplace agreement provided the majority of our employees support the changes through a formal vote," Yasuda said in a statement. Yasuda said the proposed changes were meant to remove "outdated and uncompetitive" terms and conditions to make Toyota Australia competitive. http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/12/12/australia-toyota-idINL3N0JR1N220131212
Well like Holden they did agree to the original EBA/Contract......I dont know its a very hard decision....I suppose if it means keeping your job it need to be done......All I know is the news is REALLY BAD lately!
I would have to say I don't think any of them are better off now than prior to contact with Western civilisations.
Seriously? You seriously think that the Japanese or the Koreans are worse off now than before contact with the West in the 18th/19th Centuries?
Yes, they have lost a massive amount of their culture, Japan specifically I seem to remember something about a couple of world wars and a couple of atomic weapons that were dropped on them. Just because they have the Internet, play stations and Nintendos it does not mean they are better off. Korea and Japan have become very Americanised most likely from the wars and America influencing trade with both nations. As westerners we seem to think we are the best and everyone should be like us and they are better off because they are like us. What was wrong with Japan before the west used force to open the country up to trading? It was their country and they wanted nothing to do with the west but were forced to trade with the west from my understanding. Look at China, it was closed and the British pushed Opium down their throats because the British wanted tea. They took Hong Kong and used it to keep the doors open. Opium was not a positive thing for China, the Opium wars..... Vietnam was a French colony, they were not wanted by the Vietnamese. The Dutch were in Indonesia, about the only country that was not Colonised was Thailand.
They "have lost a massive part of their culture." Oh no! Because just likes ours has been over the past few hundred years, culture is a static thing that had been perfected in the 1600s and should never change
A lot of Polynesians told us when in the Cook Islands they are grateful for Western Christian missionaries because before their arrival things were a lot more violent between the tribes and cannibalism was rife. Some Africans too have said to me that there were many positive aspects to colonial rule infrastructure, improvements in health, English as a lingua Franca between the tribes, good judicial and administrative systems etc. It is not a cut and dry issue as the left would like people to think.
Here's the judgement. http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2013/2013fca1351 Paragraph 16 lists the changes that Toyota wanted in order to "reduce Toyota's costs and increase their global competitiveness". If it means the difference between sucess and failure of Toyota in Aus, I don't think there's anything unreasonable in there.
I brought up Japan as they indeed were not colonised either, neither were Korea, Tibet, Mongolia (by the West anyway). Nepal and Bhutan were officially colonies but British reach didn't physically extend to them very easily. Japan before the US fleet forced Japan to open up to trade, Japan was a xenophobic culture, closed to outsiders. You went there, roundeyes, and you were killed. Trade was the 2nd part of the US demands. The 1st demand was for Japan to stop executing shipwrecked foreign sailors. A few problems with executing people just because they are foreigners. The US didn't go on to control Japan, Japan went on to analyse itself, and go on to emulate the best parts of modern industry, law, commerce and military structure. In emulating the best Britain and Prussia had to offer they voluntarilly did away with the largely superceded medieval Samurai class. No one forced them to that, they did that themselves. And in doing so they went from a relatively iron and energy poor country to a place that could import those things from wherever they wanted. WW1 - Japan was on our side, did you know. They didn't really take much of an active role beyond protecting Pacific sea lanes. WW2 - Please explain how they as an aggressor seeking more resources and territory at the expense of all the cultures around them, which started in 1932 with their invasion of China, is the fault of anyone else? The way they treated native Philipinos, Burmese, Javanese was shocking. I've seen revisionist history documentaries blaming the Poms and Yanks for Japan's actions in the 1940s, it's all rather spurious. The atom bombs, well documented that to end the war without them a US invasion would have resulted in 1 million US casualties alone. The Imperial government planned to send the civilian Japanese onto the beaches and out of every town to meet the US Army with knives and clubs while the Imperial army dug into the mountains, Iwo Jima style. The total projected casualty list was horrendous. 2 bombs demonstrated to the Emperor and the Japanese people what would happen to the entire nation if they forced a conventional end to the war. And after the war, when they returned to paying for the resources of their neighbours, they thrived. You name things like Nintendos, they invented and perfected them, countless products and industrial innovations in Japanese mass production techniques outperformed the rest of the world. Would you prefer that they revert to the pre-Western contact state of a poor people suffering energy deficiency but culturally believing they were the supreme people of Earth? Anyway, we're off topic, sorry everyone interested in Holden.
The below rant is from the one of the top marketing guy from Toyota, taken from a hotrod forum I doubt none members can read it , I have to agree with carps http://www.ozrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=56438 Had not the government of the day, put up the money, General Motors would not have bothered creating the Holden. How do you guys think the government paid for your educations? How do you think the government pays for the infrastructure we all enjoy? How do you think the government will pay your pensions when you get older and have no money left? How do you think we get to have one of the best medical systems in the world? Who do you think subsidises our Aussie lifestyle, which is the envy of the world? We are all subsidised by the bloody government! All day every day, regardless if we think it or not! And if you think the paltry ammount you pay as income tax or GST etc. covers everything the government provides you, maybe you need to go back to one of those government funded schools and learn how things really work. When there are no jobs left, and your customers are all unemployed and so broke they have to stop spending money on the goods or services you provide, how will you put food on the table? Mining won't support us and whilst the moiney might be good for the few who get a job digging stuff out of the ground, it doesn't take a lot of people to do it and when it's gone it's gone forever, but hey, at least we'll have a nice big hole in the middle of our Island. I'd much rather the government used a little of my tax money to create jobs and keep people gainfully employed, than tax me three times as much because there's no jobs left and they have to feed and house the population. Can't speak for 'em all, but for every $1 my employer has had from the government, they've invested another $20 back into the local economy and generated many times more in taxes etc. from the products twe make. There's probably more than a few folks here going to suffer as a result of what's transpired in recent times and a few more will survve because of the wealth they generated working for those 'filthy corporate giants' who can no longer justify the cost of manufacturing their goods here ion Australia. Yeah, I know I wasn't going to comment, but sometimes some of the views expressed are so amazing or poorly informed it's hard not to. Some also confirm that we really have become an nation of greedy and sefish bastards who don't give a stuff about the welfare of our fellow Australians so long as we're OK.
