Posted on 03/09/2013 2:41:21 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
GENEVA — The 83rd International Motor Show, which opened here last week, features the world premieres of 130 vehicles. These include an unprecedented number of models with seven-figure prices, including the $1.3 million LaFerrari supercar, the $1.15 million McLaren P1, the $1.6 million Koenigsegg Hundra and a trust-fund-busting Lamborghini, the $4 million Veneno.
The neighborhood has become so rich that the new Rolls-Royce Wraith, expected to sell for more than $300,000, seemed, in comparison, like a car for the masses.
The show, which runs through March 17 at the Palexpo convention center, could be fairly cited as another example of how the interests of haves and have-nots are diverging in shaky economic times. Europe’s economy, in particular, seems to be balancing on a precipice, depressing auto sales across the Continent.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The NY Times editorially and journalistically reflects the Punch and Pinch Sulzberger class warfare viewpoint, yet their flagship continues to sink amidst their stink and without high-expense subsidies from #1 Billionaire Carlos Slim, they would be sunk.
Weeping bitter crocodile tears!
That's what socialism does. It concentrates power so that only those who can manipulate power will profit. They buy off the rest (with other people's money) to prevent overt rebellion.
We have real class warfare going on. The corrupt get bailouts, honest citizens get the shaft. The banksters are too big to prosecute.
“Class,” this is called capitalism. If you have the bucks, you get to play. If you have a product to sell and there are buyers, you have a winner. If you don’t, you get to buy/sell something less spectacular until you reach an agreed price point. If the dogs won’t buy it, you either retool or go out of business. Business is not a zero sum game. Grow up. sd
Business is not a zero sum game. Grow up. sd
Politics is a zero sum game. Politicians control business. Grow up. co
How many of these rich are not getting their money from governments?
If you have a product and nobody buys it, you have a dud and you failed. Either redesign your dud or go out of business. Nowhere is it written that you have a god given right to succeed. You succeed by producing something someone wants to buy. Otherwise, your enterprise dies. It is pretty clear that you are depending on someone else to bail you out if you fail. And failure is part of your past, no? You are too defensive otherwise. One sinks or one swims. Our welfare state has created too many hangers-on who think society owes them simply by existing. i repeat: grow up. sd
Man, are you jaded. Who peed in your rice bowl? sd
Failures are part of most any entrepreneur's past. As a product R&D project manager, from concept to production, I was wildly successful. In seven years I created and implemented two new products and transferred them to large scale multinational production. Then I quit, because I had watched regulation kill entire industries all around me for the fun and profit of the wealthy Marxist brats of great entrepreneurs. I researched for four years as to why and wrote a book on it. That book was well received, although its proposed free-market solutions may take fifty years to develop.
So, not only are you wrong, you're writing from a simplistic dream world. Grow up. CO
In a truly free market system, it is sink or swim. If you have a good product (the proverbial "better mousetrap") then you will do well. If you insist on making buggywhips next door to Henry Ford's shiny new factory, things will not go well with you. People need to adapt and word hard, and they need to take responsibility for their own success or failure. Certain aspects of the free market system can be harsh, but that's life.
On the other hand: we don't have a truly free market system in this country.
When the government uses taxes as a weapon to spur social engineering, when the government regulates the "bad industries", when taxpayer funds subsidize the "good industries" -- then you have an economic system which is highly politicized. One can call it socialism, but I'd say what we have in the US today is much closer to classic fascism. In a highly politicized economic system, "who you know" can be far more important than "what you sell". It becomes about "pull", not "product".
Look at solar power, wind power, electric cars, coal power, nuclear power, etc. Some of these industries are just failures -- yet the money flows to them. Some of those industries work quite well -- yet they are being shut down. The politics is a key component here -- winners and losers are handpicked by the government today, and success in the market is not the be-all and end-all that it once was.
And it's been a very long time since we did.
What happened is that we socialized externalities in the name of "public health and safety" (thank you Teddy-the-progressive, never mind Nixon). The terms of those controls are sufficient to pick winners and losers in themselves. There are ways of reincorporating them back into a free market, but the politicians have no interest in that as selling favors is the currency of big donations.
Yet even lacking that, the problem with a limited government approach is that in a civil court system, the cost of affixing responsibility justly in a reality of competing and uncertain risks often exceeds the question at issue. Hence, tort reform, insurance deregulation, and the willingness of attorneys general to pitch big players into jail for fraud become the nexus of any free-market fix.
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