I have to agree with you hasbeen, as when you think about it, most cars are basically the same.

Our whole problem here are wages, and to think that despite our already handicapped manufacturing, this incompitent government thought it would be wise to further handicap them with a carbon tax, adding even more costs, something our competitors must laugh about.

Now while I don't want to see wages slashed, we must face the reality that we can no longer compete, even without the carbon tax.

My problem is though, why support this FAILING INDUSTRY while many others are in just as much trouble.

When mining sacks hundreds in one go, where is the support for these workers?

As I say, it's the pilots strike all over again.

Yes rehctub, its wages, but in more ways than one.

Our wages are too high for industry to pay, & still stay viable.

However most are too low for a worker & his family to live on in a reasonable manner, & for all too many, even 2 wages are not enough, after the cost of earning those wages are taken into account.

We have managed to get the whole thing out of balance. It is only those with high skills, a great deal of industrial power, or public employees who now get a living wage.

Government is taking far too much in tax, fuel excise & other charges to try to get enough to keep millions of bureaucrats, academics & the welfare sector, & leaving the wage earner too poor. Even the cost of the housing bubble to home buyers is largely supported by huge government charges on new housing blocks.

We are going to have to get rid of tens of thousands of bureaucrats academics, & welfare recipients to get back to a viable manufacturing, & farming economy, when the mining boom returns to normal, in the very near future.

When you look at the fact that in around 1965/66, on the average wage I paid 7.25% tax, & only 3.5% interest on a home loan, on a home that cost less than 5 times my net income, you can see the problem.

Now I've done the hard part, & explained the problem, it is up to all those who want more public spending to do the easy bit, & supply the answer.

Well men it looks as though I'll just have to go to the auction and buy up some very cheap computer driven bits of machinery that I can install in my local "Menshed" and have the boys make miniature railway trains.
The whole core problem are wages driven by prices or is it prices driven by wages. Isn't that the same as "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" and "catch 22". God what am I missing out on.
The whole system is "Catus F......" and God won't help us. What we need is an "Adjustment Bureau"

Hasbeen, this wage situation has been an issue for some time now, no more so than when labor took an axe to IR.

Even now we see yet another wage rise, while at the same time when labor want to increase super by a whopping third.

So much for super being in leu of wage rises.

I have often said you know there's a problem when wages are too high for business, yet too low to live on.

There is no way out of this mess we are now in, as once Ford goes, I fear it will be just the beginning.

Even a change of government won't save manufacturing, as it's all but doomed.

And to think labor's fix is to set up the NDIS head quarters in Geelong.

So do they expect someone on a battery drill today, will all of a sudden turn to a computer, or perhaps man the phones.

More show ponying from this mob.
What a joke they are.

Whilst it is tragic for the workers concerned, thereafter, Ford have been screwing Australians for years and they should have been allowed to go belly up years ago as "Free Market" economics clearly dictates.

Pork barreling for votes at the tax payers expense is plainly an ALP favorite tactic and indicative of their economic illiteracy.

I say, do it yourself if you want a car industry Australia, you pathetic saps and the same goes for mining.

Thereafter, the sooner these vile individuals who lock up children without charge or trial in circumstances known to produce significant adverse health outcomes are buried at the next election the better.

DreamOn, just where do you stop.

Shouldn't public transport charge a viable ticket price. Why should motorists subsidise bus travelers, when buses clutter up the roads motorists have paid for?

How about hospitals, shouldn't only those who have earned the money to pay get treatment?

I think mining is one thing that is more than paying it's own way.

I may be thick, but I did not understand your last bit, one complaint we often hear is courts letting youth off with no real penalty. Who is locking up children?