For the second year in a row, GM is selling nostalgia about the cars it used to make and hoping that will translate into sales of the cars it makes now.
Last year, there was “Holiday Ride” – about an old widower and his also-old car, a ’66 Impala SS. This year, it’s “Mrs. Hayes” – about an old widow and her even-older car, a ’57 Chevy Nomad. GM hasn’t made cars like either – stylish, with big V8s under their hoods – in decades. But GM knows people remember those cars, as they don’t the forgettable appliances GM has been making for the past several decades.
Try to imagine “Holiday Ride” or “Mrs. Hayes” with a 1995 Chevy Lumina – or a 2022 Malibu.
GM knows what isn’t selling.
As contrasted with what did, when GM was still making cars people wanted. Mark the italics. Cars that people connected with emotionally. Cars that made them feel happy or excited or . . . something. Cars that were more than just transportation. That often became part of a family, as in the ad.
GM used to make legions of cars like that. People not only remember, they hold onto them. Care for them. Restore them, lovingly and painstakingly.
They drive them to remember how it felt.
Who feels anything about a 2022 Malibu? It’s an appliance – and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s also more than that when it comes to cars. Well, it is something more than that – if you want people to remember them.
And want to sell them.
Look at the initial scene in the “Mrs. Hayes” ad. The ’57 Nomad is the only car in the parking lot that doesn’t look like every other car in the parking lot. All of the others being new GM models, as anodyne and forgettable as the can opener you bought (and threw away) five years ago.
Do you remember it? Miss it?
Chevy’s vice president of marketing, Steve Majoros, says the “Mrs. Hayes” ad is “a little nod to our past and future you know, and we’re a brand with a great future.”
Really?
GM has lost more than two-thirds of the market share it once had, back when it sold cars that made people feel something about them. In 1970 – when GM was at its apotheosis – Chevrolet division had a larger market share by itself than all of GM does today – which is just 16.4 percent as opposed to 22 percent in 1970. Remember, that latter figure is for Chevrolet division only. The former figure – 16.4 percent – is for Chevy plus GMC plus Buick plus Cadillac, which is all that remains of GM, today.
Here’s another number to put things in perspective: 2,166,043 – as in millions of cars sold by Chevrolet in 1970. GM – all of it – sold 578,639 cars in the second quarter of 2022.
That’s a holiday ride, all right.
(There’s an excellent article over at Ad Age about the rise – and fall – of Chevrolet that you can read here.)
Even as recently as 1979, GM’s Pontiac division was selling almost as many Firebirds – that one model – as GM sold of everything it sells, in the second quarter of this year. And people remember those Firebirds. As they remember GTOs and Grand Prix and so many others made by Pontiac, which was once GM’s excitement division. What is there to get excited about, now? The number of air bags GM installs in its cars? The latest “advanced driver assistance” technology? All of these things make you want to forget what GM is selling today.
Olds is gone, too – but it lives in the memories of everyone who feels something for cars. Like Pontiac, Oldsmobile also once sold a lot of cars. In fact, the Olds Cutlass was once the best-selling car on the market. Now Olds sells no cars at all – because Olds doesn’t exist anymore, except in memory. This transformation – wait a minute – occurred because Olds (like Pontiac) stopped selling cars that people wanted. GM tried to sell people appliances, instead. No more excitement. No more personality. No more anything to rouse you to feel something about them. Just a badge, engineered.
And so, people stopped connecting with them. Forgot about them.
Stopped buying them.
You’d think there might be a lesson in that.
“We’re at this incredible period of transformation,” Majoros says – by which he means GM’s doubling-down on the Appliance Ethos by “transforming” every car it makes into an electrical appliance.
And the world’s once-largest car company doesn’t even make cars anymore.
The Malibu being the very last of them, if you don’t count Camaro and Corvette – and Camaro’s on the way out, too. That leaves the automatic-only Corvette, which no longer even looks a Corvette, on top of that. It is a formidable, disposable appliance. It will never conjure the memories aroused by the sight of a ’63 split window coupe. Or, for that matter, by the sight of a ’66 Impala or a ’57 Nomad wagon.
GM is like an old man in a nursing home, looking through a photo album of memories – of better times. The difference being the old man wishes he could go back while GM seems to think it can make people forget about the present by reminding them of what used to be.
. . .
Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in! Or email me at [email protected] if the @!** “ask Eric” button doesn’t work!
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
My eBook about car buying (new and used) is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here. If that fails, email me at [email protected] and I will send you a copy directly!
I saw this “commercial” when I went to see “Babylon” not long after Christmas. Twice. Short and long versions.
Not having been to the movies in a long time [the last was a TCM revival of “Sunset Blvd” a few years ago] , I got to the theater early in the morning, movies was supposed to start at 10:15.
The bilge, nagging, wokeness, scolding, ads for TV shows, Cootie 19 misinformation and political correctness of the previews/coming attractions and self serving garbage went on forever.
No straight white males that was for bloody sure, just one simp “Project Runway” winner taking movie trivia questions from some unmemorable Hollywood Hooker. Pre-movie sewage.
I was so disgusted I almost left and didn’t stay for the movie. Not joking.
That Chevy commercial was cringe worthy. And so obvious. So predictable. Poor old lady in her ICE being :”saved” by the younger generation and his dirty … sorry … noble and heroic EV.
The movie was worthwhile [’20s Hollywood, coming of sound, right up my alley] but I learned I will show up far later [if there’s even a next time. I despise Bukkakewood] if I ever go again and there won’t be a ticket bought for “Cocaine Bear”.
Seemed like a good idea at the time. But all I could think of was “Day Of The Locust” and bought a copy online. ’30s, Hollywood, similar themes and I can watch it here at home and not be “enlightened” by corporate stooges.
“Try to imagine “Holiday Ride” or “Mrs. Hayes” with a 1995 Chevy Lumina”
Hell, I’d take a ’95 Lumina! Sure, it doesn’t come anywhere NEAR to evoking anything like that Nomad. And as far as reliability and build quality, it may have very well been a POS (was too young to remember). But at least it was SIMPLE and CHEAP, and there’s a plethora of aftermarket parts also on the cheap. And a fully restored or well preserved example would probably sell for about $10,000 in today’s climate.
Hi bluegrey,
Very, very true… I miss those things for the same reasons you do. They were once plentiful on the used market, which meant there was an abundance of solid/reliable/cheap used cars available.
Not anymore.
There’s a reason that the “GM” logo now stands for “Government Morons”, instead of “General Motors”….
And it has, for a long time now.
Ironic that the story starts before Federal GovCo destroyed the black family with all its “programs” (pogroms?) and forced integration. Per Williams and Sowell the black community was more solid than much of white life in the 50’s. GovCo changed all that in the 60’s.
It was in the 60’s that GovCo set its sights on making cars “better”. We now see where that had brought us. Soul-less, appliance-like transportation modules…all interchangeable…easily forgotten.
Another irony. Here they are trying to sell themselves on making a car that is still fully functional, attractive and serviceable after SIXTY-FIVE YEARS!!! Where will any of the current GM (or other electronified examples) models be in 65 years? They will have less appeal, if they operate at all, than an 80’s portable phone the size of a shoe box.
After watching only two-thirds of that PATHETIC “Mrs Hayes” ad (where, of course, the ICE Nomad doesn’t start), I have but one thing to say: F*CK CEO Mary Barra!!! She has destroyed GM!
Nothing they’re building interests me. Turbo hyper-stressed 3 cyl frenetic 3600 lb “compact” CUVs are going to be just the ticket to convince people that ICE vehicles are too miserable to drive any longer.
That Turbo/3/3600 lb equation does not bode well for longevity.
I’ll keep what I have. If I have to buy something again, it won’t be from the Detroit BK Two [and soon to be Three].
And I’ve owned GM cars since 92.
Usually watch the videos you post Eric, sometimes not when I can guess the content as I could on this one. Went back, watched, way way worse than I thought it would be. My two brain cells cannot comprehend, connect, even imagine this weird, strange fantasy of a commercial.
Back in the late 60’s–early 70’s right in the middle of desegregation, I was in 7th (?) grade. For a while in gym class, every day this big black girl with a huge afro and her friend would harass me when I went to get my gym clothes out of the basket. Every day! Every single day! I guess they smelled fear in me—-and yes I was very afraid of both of them. They could’ve killed me very easily. Don’t know how or why, but they eventually stopped bothering me.
Anyway, I try to just treat everyone individually, not as a group. I meet some very nice white and black people out when I’m running around town. I also meet some very questionable people of both colors when I’m out. The kind of either color that you do not want to be caught out in the dark with.
That video just does not click (not word looking for) with me. As others have said, it’s more anti-white propaganda.
Yeah, so I just refused to watch it.
Am clicking the ‘like’ button on all the comments. They are all good.
Kind of depressing when washing the ‘chrome’ on the truck and it’s just shiny plastic.
Everything is pretend now days.
“Who feels anything about a 2022 Malibu? It’s an appliance – and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s also more than that when it comes to cars”
I gave the general near 10 years of my life in the late 80’s to early 90’s. Drove a chevy truck.
It always pissed me off it was and is still the number one stolen vehicle so they could sell more.
I drive a Toyota assembled in Tennessee now for many years.
GM kkilled a 26 year old girl because they did not want to pay to fix the ignition switch from disconnecting from a key that was to heavy.
Hi Bear,
I’m done with GM, too. The vehicles they make are generic and the politics they push insufferable.
Sentimental tripe is the only marketing angle these days; see reboots, remakes, etc in media.
Otherwise I have no idea who GM is selling to. Cadillac was most recently old folks with memories of it being the finest and wannabe or real gangsters. I don’t see how Lil Nas X will make them want the Lyric.
Yeah pretty stupid that GM does not understand the disconnect between what they’re pushing and what people want. But I guess in the Great Reset what we want is irrelevant right? We will see how far that goes. Somehow I think their wishing and hoping they can turn us all into bots won’t go as smoothly as they are planning.
I think GM’s future is as empty of hope as the mall parking lot in the future, but that’s what happens when you build something that doesn’t pull at your heartstrings when you look at it. Good lord are they building some fugly cars now.
Funny thing about the toaster picture is that I might have the exact same one kicking around somewhere. Built to last, all steel construction with Bakelite handles and knob with a genuine rubber power cord and all electro mechanical innards unlike the computerized toasters today. Doesn’t do thick slices or bagels though.
I think it was the GM bankruptcy in the late 2000’s that finally did them in, relative. And didn’t the fed gov bail them out? was it with conditions? I think so.
At that time I still was buying all GM’s, a lot of them.
But something changed at the time, from innovative trucks, engines, etc… IMO, before that time they always were at the leading edge of making trucks better and better. Then, at that time, they stared to have a mpg-first mentality. and it showed in me not liking how their cars drove. it was bad. even their 6.2 was hard to drive, i really hated them. I finally made the switch, to mostly FCA (ram and jeep) at that time and couldn’t be happier with the drivability of their cars (with 1-2 less mpg).
Now Stelantis appears to be doing similar things with the Hemi gone. Hoping their new I6-TT drives and performs as good as their older stuff.
I guess some woke marketing type sold the manufacturers the idea that a sad story was ‘more better’ than speaking about the specs of the actual car.
At this point I just want to hear why this appliance is better than that other appliance from the engineer side. I’m never going to buy an appliance based on ‘feelz’. Just tell me what the thing can do better.
I’ll admit that here was one commercial that made me laugh…good music too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXUjSgWBhy8
15 years later and it’s a hate crime to have a straight white man be the lead in a commercial
Hi Manse,
What can this appliance do better? Well, it’s quicker – and quieter. But unlike the ’57 Chevy, when it stops it’s not going anywhere without a flatbed. Practically anything that might be wrong with that ’57 could be fixed right there in the parking lot.
The ’57 is not an appliance. Everything EV and the 4cyl turbos coming out now iS. Maybe that’s why they market some sad story instead of the spec’s and capability. That ’57 has a huge trunk, big seats, simple engine. with IIRC. has some serious torque for that time period.
All I was pointing out is that instead of marketing the capabilities, they market sad stories and/or a lifestyle.
Well-said, Manse –
I hadn’t thought about that aspect of it, but you’re spot on. I can’t recall the last time I saw a commercial that touted specs. Instead, some insipid story, as you say.
The Holiday Ride add brought tears to my eyes, even though I had seen it before. I felt sad for the loneliness of the man, having lost his wife and sitting in his old, beaten down car that was no longer drivable. Even the music evoked images of happy times from the past long lost.
Then he opened the door to his garage and saw his old car all fixed up, shiny and new. He climbed into the car, saw the framed picture of his wife, his dog jumped into the car beside him, he turned the key and heard the roar of the big v8 engine. And his daughter climbed into the car beside him. I really felt the joy that driving his old car with his daughter brought to him.
It’s too bad the GM no longer makes beautiful cars like this. Neither, sadly, does anyone else.
This is what John Wick Chapter Four looks like
General Motors is a Dead Company Walking. They just don’t know it yet.
At one point, perhaps 1970 that Eric references, GM had 52% of new car sales in the US Market.
Now they’re barely 16%. How do you lose more than 2/3rds of your market share?!?
Boring cars designed on the cheap and built by surly, indifferent labor would do it.
Toyota, Honda, and Nissan ate GM’s lunch with reliable, practical if not exciting cars and didn’t even say Thank You.
Then came the South Koreans to grab even more off GM’s plate.
How GM keeps 16% astounds me. At some point in my lifetime GM will be bought by a foreign manufacturer, perhaps the Chinese.
I agree, Mack –
I grew up in a “GM” family; Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs and Chevys. I have owned a dozen GM vehicles myself and still have one (my ’76 Trans Am) which I revere. But there isn’t a single vehicle in GM’s current portfolio that interests me, even a little bit. This includes the current Camaro which is a bad caricature of a ’69. The Corvette looks like a generic hypercar and while it performs better than any prior Corvette, it is automatic-only and does nothing for me. If GM were to give me either – or both – I’d sell them the next day.
I will never sell my ’76 TA.
And that’s the difference.
Institutional investors are keeping GM alive. All the big defined benefit managers hold it, because they know they’ll get bailouts and “loans” from the taxpayers. Automobile manufacturing is one of those industrial darlings that governments want as a source of national pride. Look at British Leyland in the 1970s. There was no reason why anyone should have been building affordable cars in Europe at the time, but because it became a political policy to have automobile manufacturing the government basically nationalized the company. The corporate mangers knew they were running a marketing and jobs program, so who cares if the cars were any good or not.
I wonder how many congressmen have GM in their portfolio?
Somehow I instinctively knew it was all over in 2008(?) when hearing a 30 second radio ad for the new Cruze. It was mostly barking about the 50 cents worth of built-in plastic and metal 5 volt USB charger connector. From now on it will be the Mad Max Bordertown fight to find gasoline and diesel, for those who choose not to be all into the hive mind Borg controlled power grid.
Okay. I admit it. I confess. I like the 95 Lumina, as well as all the other FWD, V6, 6-passenger land barges. I LOVE them. I want them ALL. If this means I have to turn in my car guy card, I understand, but I can’t change the way I feel.
Hi Brandon,
Those weren’t bad cars; just not memorable ones. That’s the problem.
The most important problem, (And I really like the “Lumina-Carlo” of those years) is that they are not only forgettable they are not keep-save-able cars. Once the rust takes hold, and the plastic lets go, there is no economical alternative to the scrap heap. I know you love your T/A, Eric, but even by the 70’s there was way too much irreplaceable plastic involved. The last generation I really like were made about when I was born in the mid 60’s. Where the interiors had chromed steel (or at least chromed pot metal) knobs and controls. After the safety cult took over, everything got padded, soft touched, and rounded, and became replacement only items.
I understand your point Ernie, but the same has been said about the cars of the ’50s,’60s, ’70s, ’80s.
Robert Gottleib, in his Classic Comments column in Motor Trend back in 1967 had the same disdain for current industry product in his response to a reader’s question about putting a then new ’67 Cougar on blocks and having a mint ‘classic in 20 years.
This was one of the first Motor Trend magazines I bought in 1967.
I’ve read it over and over again, since: same claims, different decades. The all knowing automotive press….Same song, every time.
I didn’t agree then and I don’t now. One car I have owned for 40 years, another 28 and the newest 18. Out of the six I have owned since 1982, three are still in my driveway and one my brother still drives [that one is now 27]. One was traded in, one rear ended and totaled.
Point being, they are “save-able”. All three of mine are from expired makes: Plymouth, Oldsmobile, Saturn…. ordinary stuff too. Not memorable.
They blow my kilt up though and that’s all that’s ever mattered to me.
The irony of today.
GM really needs to look to the past so it can HAVE a future. Not just to make a very lame ad. There is no need to make ads of cars they refuse to make.
Make real cars and people will buy them.
It’s current path only leads to bankruptcy court again. Someday there won’t be any more taxpayer money to pick.
GM isn’t even being original.
This is the original ‘car’s life’ commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhRG_iv_U6c
I was a GM guy back in the day. Had a ’65 GTO with a 389 cubic inch V8, 4 barrel Holley carburetor, 4 speed Hurst shifter, positraction, duel exhausts, got 8 miles a gallon on premium fuel and went like a bat out of hell. Driving that car, punching through the gears, getting rubber in every gear, pushing the limits of the machine, your skill and your nerve, damn that was being alive.
Now people are all depressed, looking for escape and relief from boredom and meaninglessness through drugs and virtual “reality”. The feminization of the culture works overtime at taking risk, thrill and joy out of life in the pursuit of safety and utility. The demeaning of masculinity has reached its culmination in the “transgender” movement where men are celebrated for having such self hatred they castrate themselves, believing they can become a woman. A culture of such sickness, lies and depravity cannot long survive.
Indeed, Griff- the hysterical mommy has WAY too much influence over our lives. Also, unless your exhaust is fighting itself, it is DUAL exhaust…
I was walking with the wife through a parking lot the other day and I had to point out:
ME: Look at that! That gay little dork-mobile is a Buick!!
HER: What?! No way!
ME: Look at the badge!!
The name “General Motors” is kind of appropriate and more so anymore. Reminds me of an old Navy guy that would tell me:
– a ship is not a boat and a boat is not a ship. but a submarine IS a boat
– an engine is not a motor and a motor is not an engine
– a “buddy” is someone that goes into town and gets two blow jobs and brings one back
Interesting guy. Was an ex-girlfriend’s father that did 7 tours in ‘Nam.
Anyway, General MOTORS as in wire-windings and magnetos. They’ve finally lived up to their name, now that they’ll be heading into general obscurity. Ah those were the days. Have you all put in your orders for a $300K Cadillac yet? Better hurry!
Reply to EM:
Not to dis you or anything like that but I had a similar discussion with the guy restoring my Camaro and he said- But they never called it the “Harley Davidson Engine Company”. Still makes me laugh when I pour motor oil into my engine.
As for the $300K Cadillac it’s going to flop worse than the Cimaron.
Hey Landru,
Yeah, I get most people (and even companies like GM or Harley D) use “motor” to mean engine or (now) wire-wound magneto motor. But if you ever talk to a salty dog Navy guy, he’ll make sure you don’t conflate motor/engine or bulkhead/wall… ceiling/overhead… floor/deck… etc! 😁
@4:50 Billy said, “I was werkin on dis thang all night.” That line was funny. It was probably nothing more than a dead battery that left Mrs Hayes and her fine ride stranded at the dirty doughnut strip mall.
This time when GM goes tits up we should refuse to bail them out. If said bailout is forthcoming by our bought and paid for Gov whores, we should stop paying any and all taxes. What are they gonna do, Kill us all? Jail us all? They’re already trying to do that.
We often forget how incompetent our ham handed Government is at everything. They are like the Billy who needs all night to change the battery. To be fair to Billy, his experience changing batteries probably amounts to pulling out his EBT card and ponying up 5K for a new “battery.”
Government incompetence is our Obi-wan Kenobi, i.e., our only hope at this point.
Once upon a time, I read Peter Schiff’s (now banned) “The Government Mafia” about how income taxes are essentially illegal and unconstitutional. I tried to practice what he was preaching. Although I fared better than he did, I learned the hard way what they will do.
They will just take everything you have and you’ll be out on the street. They can levy 100% of your wages — that’s something that I had to “prove” to many a naysayer. “No way! They can’t do that!” The fuck if they can’t and they WILL.
You would need mass noncompliance and, just like covid, it’ll never happen. I would love to see it though. Meanwhile… GM stock… doing just fine because “the market” absolutely IS manipulated and is as fake as our elections.
OOPS! *Irwin* Schiff’s “The Federal Mafia”. And though more/less “banned”, you can actually find it on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Federal-Mafia-Illegally-Unlawfully-Collects/dp/0930374096
I don’t recommend that anyone try to follow its guidance. I’ve heard that people have “untaxed” themselves successfully but I failed miserably and paid a heavy penalty that took years to fix.
EM,
Back in the mid 80s I discovered Irwin. I leaned hard to libertarian before then, but didn’t know I wasn’t the only one. The fact that there is no law, and not even a regulation that requires one to pay personal income tax is a blatant in your face demonstration that FedGov is indeed a criminal organization.
Yeah John, that’s the ultimate “take away” that I learned from the experience. They’re a criminal organization and unless it suits their goals, they don’t give the slightest fuck about what the law says or not. It took me forever to learn that they do what they want and that laws are for us little people — laws do-not-apply (DNA) to government.
In my defense, I was raised in Commiefornia and deeply indoctrinated against actual reality. It took forever to shake off the fairy tales and learn how the world really works.
The craziest part of my life (IMO) was that I was surrounded by ostensible/nominal counter-culture rebels. “Fuck the system”, “Fuck the man”, “Sex, drugs, and rock & roll… maaaan!”
Yeah bullshit. Also took me forever to see how those “rebels” were/are just idiots that ultimately support the very thing they claimed to be against. Silly me. Live and learn.
Long ago I saw Larkin Rose’s video where he goes through the history of the federal income tax change by change. No woo-woo stuff but the tax code, the definitions, one step at a time. Doing so makes the reality of what has been done and is being done clear as day.
A measure sold as taxing the rich was effectively changed into a tax on the wages and salaries of ordinary people, all by slight of hand.
Brent,
Neither law nor code was ever written that defines income. Not an accident. The SCOTUS has defined it in four cases, which I won’t look up, and were not related to income tax, as profit or gain, and that simple conversion, labor to money etc., is not a gain. The IRS code defines taxable income as “income derived from wages, tips, and other compensation”. The key word being DERIVED FROM. If you are an employee, you actually work at a loss, otherwise your employer could not profit from your labor. Your employer can “derive” such profit or gain from your “wages, tips, and other compensation, aka income. You don’t. So bad they set up a “special” tax court, to screen you from what passes for the real judicial system.
In our current hyperinflation, I have no idea how one could determine if they actually made a profit or not.
Wall street sees “labor” as being a necessary evil, its true value to be minimized at all cost while valuing the CEOs and “stockholders” above and beyond their true worth.
This even applies to CEOs, that run their corporations into the ground while still receiving massive “rewards” for their “expertise”.
Let’s not forget the corporate vultures (a la Mitt Romney) that specialize in parting out viable businesses in order to maximize their “profits”
Henry Ford “got it right” when he CREATED a market for his cars by making them inexpensive while paying his workforce a decent wage. He realized that a well-paid workforce would be able to buy his products, among other things. It could be safely argued that Ford, CREATED the middle class. Automobiles, once “playthings for the rich” were made affordable for the “ordinary common man”. Henry Ford stated that he wanted workers to “enjoy the fruits of their labor”, hence the 8-hour workday and $5 per-day wage was instituted. Wall street howled when Ford instituted his $5 per-day wage claiming that it would destroy capitalism.
Henry Ford KNEW who the banksters and vulture capitalists were and made no bones about calling them out and naming them, Father Charles Coughlin did the same thing and was ostracized by the Catholic Church for pointing out the TRUTH about our vulture capitalist society.
“Vulture capitalism” can be defined as the owners of businesses and industries that collude with each other, also in collusion with the “money types” (banksters) depressing wages solely to increase their stockholder “profits” at the top while impoverishing those who actually WORK, producing their products.
All one has to do is look at today’s CEOs, even in failing companies, being paid exorbitant salaries, along with stock options and other “perks” while pleading poverty, pushing down wages for their employees.
Today’s capitalist “mantra” is that labor costs must be as cheap as possible while the “value” (profit) to the stockholder must be as great as possible. Sacrificing labor on the altar of “maximum profits” NEVER works in the long term.
Of course, in the short term, with cheap Chinese goods flooding the market, the economy looks, good, but without CONSUMERS who hold jobs that pay reasonably well, all bets are off. There needs to be a balance between profits and labor.
Presently, labor is looked upon as a “necessary evil” to be minimized at all costs. The problem arises-without labor there are no consumers. As I previously stated, a “balance” must be maintained. Labor is not evil, but a necessary and valuable component of capitalism.
Pre-WW2 Germany’s economic successes and the rapid rise of the German economy was predicated on labor being assigned “value”and monetized-something that is (and has been) missing in capitalist societies today. Germany had an “economic miracle” while the rest of the world was mired in the “great depression”.
If labor costs need to be trimmed to assure “profit” at the top, something is seriously wrong. In fact, in the well-paid American automobile industry, labor costs account only for approximately 10% of total costs.
Offshoring production results in consumers (customers) being “lost”.
As to “tariffs”, the American country ran on tariffs from its inception until 1913, when the “income tax” and “federal reserve” was established.
The American economy is being propped up by the “social safety net” which obscures the TRUE economic situation in the U S .
EM, the market is being propped up by government subsidies funded by fiat currency. When it crashes, not if, the shit is gonna hit the fan! The Great Depression will pale in comparison.
Allen,
“Money” can be printed. Wealth cannot be.
Back in my 80s and 90s Vegas days I followed Irwin Schiff. He was somewhat of a folk hero around there. He posited that there was no LAW requiring one to pay income taxes. I spent some time, looking into his work, and he is also;ut;ly correct. However, being young and having kids, convinced me to err on the side of caution. I paid Cesar his due.
You are absolutely correct EM that they will squash you like a bug. IMO we’d need upwards of 20% non-compliance, to immunize any group of resistors from the heavy ham hand of the IRS. Thats probably the reason for the 87k new IRS agents. They know on some level what is coming.
Having seen the inside of the grey bar hotel as a kid, I made a vow that I would never again succumb to such a fate. Even if it meant they had to kill me. Now older, facing death, I realize I’m going to die in the not to distant, or distant future. I’ll embrace it when it comes as I’ve lived a kick ass life.
The idea I continue to work off of is owning nothing, controlling everything. With clear lines of succession for my progeny.
Our first dictator Lincoln introduced the first income tax of course. Set the precedent as he did with so much in creating the federal leviathan we have today.
Hi EM,
Government “incompetence” is a feature, not a bug, for the people that claim the right to rule us. It helps them and perhaps, if the shit really hits the fan, it may be our OBI-wan Kenobi, but not right now.
The great Robert Higgs wrote “All Government Policies Succeed in the Long Run”. It is well worth a read.
https://blog.independent.org/2013/09/13/all-government-policies-succeed-in-the-long-run/
Cheers,
Jeremy
It was cranking full speed. Simple choke issue or vapor lock due to ethanol in the gasoline.
I could have had Ms. Hayes on her way in her own car in five minutes most likely. She got to the store so odds are the coil just didn’t up and die while parked. Points unlikely as well. Either way that should be a walk down the strip mall to the autoparts store. Well at least it was in better times. Even if stocking was an issue there should be a coil that can work with a GM inline 6 or V8 to get home.
I was thinking that he had it converted to electric…
https://www.thedrive.com/news/37354/the-chevrolet-performance-ecrate-is-here-to-make-electric-drivetrain-swaps-easier-than-ever
‘Mrs Hayes’ and her ’57 Nomad wagon evokes another Mrs Hayes — the tragic Charlotte Hayes, whose nymphet daughter Lolita attracts the old lecher Humbert Humbert, who soon marries Charlotte for the sole purpose of insinuating himself into the life of Lolita (Dolores Hayes).
Poor Mrs Hayes is dispatched early on in the novel, after pilfering Humbert’s diary and discovering herself referred to as an old bag. Charlotte rushes out of the house in blind tears, into the street, and is promptly run over by a passing motorist.
Confronted with the patently fake casting, dialogue, and music of GM’s ‘Mrs Hayes’ — even its infuriating fake snow — one wishes for some sudden, scandalous fatal drama in place of its saccharine hollowness, such as old Humbert driving the Haze bus at 20 mph on the wrong side of the highway as the cops close in, finally veering off the road and ending up mired in a cow pasture awaiting his arrest.
But an utterly conformist woke operation like GM must pretend that life is unblemished by only the most minor inconveniences — not ball-busting show-stoppers like running down the EeeVeeee battery with the next charging station still fifty miles away.
Happened to see Get Low (2009) starring Robert Duvall and Bill Murray over Thanksgiving, about a 1930s Tennessee hermit who sponsored his own funeral party while still alive. That’s what GM is up to with its cringeworthy Mrs Hayes — parodying its own funeral, as its second and final bankruptcy approaches.
As Oscar Wilde quipped, you’d have to have a heart of stone to watch ‘Mrs Hayes’ without laughing your ass off.
Back in my “running” days in the 80’s, I as well as my friends would often cruise the town when we started driving. That in itself is also doesn’t happen anymore except for the occasional cruise meets involving mostly Gen X and older. But anyway, one could tell the cars apart back them even at night by the headlights and taillights without getting close to the other car. Sometimes even by the exhaust sound. Now you can’t tell different models apart even in broad daylight until you can see the badging. GM should modify its name to Gone Motors since it is now going into the appliance business!
Dinah Shore was the very best advertisement Chevrolet could ever have had to boost sales. It couldn’t get any better.
See the USA in your Chevrolet
The Rockies way out west are calling you
Everybody loved Dinah Shore.
My brother had a ‘57 Chevy Nomad. He liked to drive it fast and it was a cop magnet so he frequently got pulled over, but back then he could talk himself out of a ticket and wasn’t “hut-hutted”. Most of the cop just wanted a closer look at the car.
I don’t watch much television but I happened to catch that commercial in passing the other day, and said “What the hell is this?” Yet ANOTHER bit of advertising in which blacks are portrayed in a completely unrealistic fashion.
If everything you knew about America was from advertising, you’d think it was in sub-Saharan Africa and 99% black instead of only 13%.
Like it or not, in segregated 1957 America, not many blacks were buying new Chevy Nomads. NOTHING screams “Baby Boomer white suburban America” more than a ’57 Chevy.
And it’s also true that driving and restoring classic cars today is not a black thing, it’s a white Boomer thing.
The commercial is not intended to sell anything, it is simply another piece of woke anti-white propaganda created by a dying corporation that is, for all intents and purposes, an appendage of the anti-white, anti-car, and anti-freedom government.
LOL so true X. Eric hope you get a like button here one day.
Around where I live and frequent (MD, DC, VA), it seems as though affluent black people have a thing for Mercedes and Maserati. One black dude had an absolutely stunning Mercedes S63 AMG on display at the local cars and coffee. I have to wonder how those people are gonna participate in this “glorious transformation”. Give up that distinction for a toaster on wheels? I bet they will be happy and proud in the Mercedes badged toasters. That’s my prediction.
But it seems a little less convincing of an “HA! Suck on that whitey!” moment at that point. But who can understand the motivation anymore? I can’t.
I, too, give Thanks to “X” for his comment.
My first thought, too!
Chevy’s vice president of marketing, Steve Majoros, says the “Mrs. Hayes” ad is “a little nod to our past and future you know, and we’re a brand with a great future.”
F-ck Majoros. His first priority is pushing the “wokeness” ((agenda)).. Salvaging GM is a distant second. The Hayes ad is slick propaganda first and foremost. It hits all the buttons: Black boys are just as nice and polite as White kids. A pretty White woman married to a Black man is perfectly normal and natural. Black people keep their neighborhoods clean and tidy, just like White people. Etc Etc. Disgusting, given the ongoing attacks on clueless altruistic White people by certain hostile nation wreckers covert infiltraters, and culture subverters.
My 2 bits. .
Waal, shee-it.
If’n they wanted to get the demographics closer to the truth (NBL) they *might* make a commercial featuring a lowered ’69 Impala which has been in the family for 3 generations.
As it happens, one of my neighbors owns such a beast, bought new in ’69 by his grandfather, restored by his father, who, sadly, died of cancer 10 years ago. Beautiful pearl gray paint job. No spinners or wheel well lights, though.
Tchebbie for tchure, mon. (cue accordion hiccups over a 3/4 bass line). Salud, ese.
Hey Adi, I grew up around the eses that just couldn’t get over a lowered Impala with hydraulics, dingle balls, and a stereo playing the oldies at 100 decibels. “Oh shit! Impala is da bomb… holmes!!”
TBF, they were damn good at body work and engine repair. Too bad they couldn’t help blasting each other away over stupid shit and couldn’t stay out of jail for long.
aye, aye, aye! riva! riva! (gun shots in the air)
Re: X November 26, 2022 At 10:38 am
I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in a mixed community. Set that commercial forward a decade where 1969 becomes 1979 and it is a realistic enough representation. Where I grew up the black families at the time were on average better off financially than the white families. I knew black families that fit more or less Mrs. Hayes’s life, although again, maybe slightly younger.
In the decades since the town has changed and things aren’t what they used to be, there was a brief moment in time…
During the days of racial segregation, blacks gravitated to large cars as they could be used as temporary “living spaces” if hotel accommodations were unavailable.
So true X. Its so cringeworthy to watch most anything these days due to the wokeness. The media makes out like whites and males are stupid and secondary. But then I suppose that-must have been how black people felt in the 60s. What all of the latest has done is release me from the grip of media and it feels great!
“transforming” every car it makes it an electrical appliance.”
With no power grid to feed them? Curious how they intend to make money doing that.
The time is long past when one could depend on a brand to produce product similar in quality and performance to previous iterations of that brand. Brands are simply names, that are now routinely bought and sold, from one company to another. Unless you take a deep dive, you don’t even know what company makes a product. And GM is doing a lot of selling. Once upon a time, GM, through its subsidiary Frigidaire, made practically all the house hold appliances in the US. By simply putting a different badge on them. Like Kenmore. They sold Frigidaire. I have no idea who owns it now, nor do I care.
Makes perfect sense, much like the Plandemic bit, “together, apart”.
Move forward, by looking back.
…Put the gear shift into Drive, focus & keep your eyes on the rear-view mirror, then hit the gas.
Psft. Bizarro World.