And Ford gets GIANT markups on the F150s, they are super profitable for them and the best selling truck for many many years now. Toyota, Honda aren't even close to American truck and SUV sales.
So explain to me again how US autos aren't competitive with Japanese brands?
Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay resisting any change away from skills their members have, but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of parts required.
VW group has twice the EVs in pipeline than Tesla. Sales are probably gonna overtake Tesla this or next year. They are not as fun as Teslas but they are solid products that people seem to prefer over fart mode that cost them extra $10k.
On what evidence do you say that? The German auto unions have been saying for years that the switch to electric needs to be planned and managed exactly so the sector remains competitive and can employ people
>VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!
Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants.
Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
I didn't say unions are not successful, I said that workplaces like VW or Porsche are not the norm in Germany. They're like Germany's FAANG; very successful, but not the norm for every industry employee there since they don't all enjoy such good conditions.
I had a friend from France getting his undergraduate degree in the US Marvel at how much learning we were getting done, since we didnt spend half of every semester on strike.
There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join a particular union as a condition of employment exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.
I don't know why you claim that smaller companies in the automotive sector in Germany don't have ununionzed workforces, but the IG Metall has a »Organisationsgrad« in this sector (how many of the workers are union members) above 90 percent (see https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/gewerkschaften-die-u...).
It's likely not as bad as in France, but in a shifting economy, German unions are still hurting the manufacturers. Just last year they got the CEO of Volkswagen fired for wanting to invest massively in electric cars. Workers specialized in ICE drivetrains can't have that. Much easier to block the innovation at board level than to retrain. That will go on until somehow union dominance is overcome or the companies are dead in the water against new competitors.
Warren has been campaigning to break up large tech companies.
What is so unprofessional about that?
Clearly if she was to try and get them fined or broken up it would be through these laws.
She isn't silencing them. She's saying that there'll be consequences.
And Amazon's PR isn't a small company. They can take the heat.
I don't agree with you. A company that forces employees to piss in bottles and lies about it should have their lies face consequences.
Warren isn't removing their tweets. How are they being silenced?
Here is the quotes:
```
After she posted the video on Twitter, saying that companies like Amazon "pay close to nothing in taxes," the tech giant quickly fired back.
"You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them," it tweeted from its official news account.
"If you don't like the laws you've created, by all means, change them," it added.
Amazon said that it had paid "billions of dollars" in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
Warren hit back, saying: "I didn't write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did.
"But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share," she added. "And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."
```
You're being obtuse. You know as well as anyone that it doesn't matter if the homeless man in the park heckles Senators. That's the difference; Amazon has real power behind their words.
The problem is not that Amazon is criticising politicians. The problem is that Amazon doesn't need to care; it'll get loads of money anyway. I need to care about what I say, because if I upset people, they'll stop interacting with me.
If Amazon started running adverts about a giant space monkey that wanted to eat the moon, what would happen?
If Warren tweeted that she was going to break up amazon because they were harming consumers and mistreating workers, etc, that would be one thing.
Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of corruption / abuse of power.
Instead of “Politicans should not express views I don't like on social media” how about “Politicans should not express the view that ‘people shouldn’t be powerful enough to be snotty to/heckle me’ on any platform.”
It’s the “so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets” part that’s bad. Regardless of how you feel about her campaign to break up big tech, this is an appalling thing for a government official to say. I hate Twitter and Twitter culture as much as anyone, but “you shouldn’t be powerful enough to be snotty to a senator” is dystopian in my book.
But in this case the Amazon Twitter account is in the wrong while Warren is in the right. Amazon Twitter straight up lied. Warren is actively doing the job she was elected to do of motivating change to make laws and rules that will change the underlying foundation of the business landscape in ways that she and those who voted for her perceive as positive.
I presume the people that voted for Warren are on her side in this argument so she's being an advocate for their views.
Just because you think Amazon's employees being forced to piss in bottles isn't bad to you doesn't mean that others sees it as an injustice that makes people angry.
>Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
Maybe treat each event on a case by case basis rather than a blanket rule?
Toyota sold about 336,000 Camrys.
They sold a little over 110,000 Tundras.
About 200,000 Tacomas.
And Ford gets GIANT markups on the F150s, they are super profitable for them and the best selling truck for many many years now. Toyota, Honda aren't even close to American truck and SUV sales.
So explain to me again how US autos aren't competitive with Japanese brands?