No Wonder they're going broke

NEW YORK – General Motors Corp. will offer buyouts to all of its hourly employees, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday, as the troubled automaker continues to slash costs.
GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said the buyouts will mainly target GM's 22,000 retirement-eligible hourly employees, though any union employee can take the offer.
News of the buyouts first broke on Monday. A union official told The Associated Press then that GM would offer $20,000 in cash and a $25,000 car voucher for workers who retire early and those who simply leave the company.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because workers were not yet notified of the packages.
Sapienza confirmed that the offer will consist of a car voucher and a one-time cash payment, though declined to offer more details, saying that employees will be informed of the specifics of the offer on Friday. However, he said the latest offer would be less generous than previous buyouts.

Huh, must be nice to have somebody give you more than a few month's health insurance and a few week's pay when they hand you your walking papers. That's all I got last time I worked somewhere for ten years.

And I can see why the big auto companies are going broke by being generous, although I suspect that the folks taking the buyout will be in the street soon enough after the government takes it's share. It's all taxable income, and more than likely taxed higher than usual paychecks.

Sometimes it really helps to have a Union behind you. I suspect those days are numbered, because of the way people love to hate unions for past abuses.

Cars are part of the reason we're a fucked up bunch of creeps in this country.

They're useful tools, but too often they are giant rolling cocoons that isolate us from the rest of the world and feed our paranoia when it comes to mingling with other people.

Mass transit done right has a real grounding and equality inducing element to it.

Cars just breed more sprawl, more aggressive behavior and a huge sense of entitlement that extracts far more cost and damage than most people realize.

Add up the costs of suburban development, the lack of walkable neighborhoods, the cost of road building and all the runoff problems and green house gasses and particulate matter that wind up in every body's lungs and the whole picture shifts.

But most people's creepy sense of entitlement about their cars makes them turn a deaf ear. They're too busy bitching about the taxes they're paying for those bums to ride the crappy bus service most places have.