Red Barchetta Blues

A collection of thoughts about the various challenges facing the auto industry driven by

  • a century of old, familiar technologies (internal combustion engines) causing global problems
  • competing technology solutions to mitigate or eliminate traditional ICE problems
  • competing regulatory pressures pushing specific technology solutions
  • multi-national corporations attempting to select replacement technologies requiring multi-billion dollar bets
  • massive, square wave changes in labor and supply markets brought about by a worldwide pandemic
  • enormous uncertainty in customer demand for core drive train technology alternatives
  • enormous uncertainty in customer demand for feature technologies (infotainment, safety, self-driving)
  • longstanding manufacturer / dealer dysfunction

WTH

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I am seeing this economic theory poke up for the first time in my recollection. I had been thinking along similar lines. In that the unevenness of labor rates creates competing ideas for what is happening.

We have the supply siders seeing labor inflation.

We have the demand siders seeing opportunity for the US economy.

Those who do not see opportunity would ship more jobs to China as usual. In other words self satisfied and failed causing harm to many American citizens and throwing away the best of our economy.

The worse the US economy would do with supply siders the relatively more goods and services cost all of us.

The better the US economy does with demand siders opportunities the relatively less goods and services cost.

People taking better jobs etc…mitigate the inflation effect more than realized by most economists.

We have many seniors here. You were lied to among yourselves that people would be used as cheap labor. You can not blame people for wanting much better wages. You wanted much better wages as well.

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Some music to listen to while reading the blog post: Rush - Red Barchetta (Live (1981/Canada) - YouTube

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“Red Barchetta” was inspired by story published in a 1973 edition of Road & Track called “A Nice Morning Drive” by Rich Foster, which was unknown by Foster until the 1990s. Foster and Neil Peart wound up connecting in 2007 for a motorcycle trip.

http://www.bmwbmw.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8693

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