That is assuming flying cars are cheap enough for everybody to own. Planes certainly are not, and it would follow the same model. Only a select few people will have flying cars and they will be well maintained and have regular check ups, etc... Check back on this thread in 50 years..I'll be right!
That's ridiculous. Labor costs, which consist of pensions, healthcare, and salary, created a situation where there was no way that GM could be competitive. Think about it - their pension plans were fine for a while because of a boom market. That's over. Healthcare costs have gone through the roof in the last 10-15 years. On top of that, they are paying 50-70% more for labor than their competitors and you expect them to be able to succeed? The only reason they are here today is because of living off of GMAC (their financing arm) profits for years. Now that the flow of easy credit and people with credit to burn is over, of COURSE they are done. The crappy cars and crappy designs were a direct reflection of their cost-to-build factor. They couldn't afford to design and build better cars than they did - they would have been losing more money on them than they could recoup on GMAC. To get back on the political tangent - socialism via the unions killed GM.
DUH. That's why we have PARACHUTES, people! think! Spoiler "WARNING! WARNING! You're running out of gas in mid air... WARNING! PELIGRO! no tiene gas! something_in_French here! Ne pas le gas!" - [pop the 'chute, you're good to go... or land, whatever] With the exception of my granpa's BelAir and the Batmobile, cars don't have wings?
I'm not "right wing" and I blame the unions for much of GM's problems. I also blame management for making incredibly poor decisions. It reminds me of my own profession, the airline industry. Anyway, until wages and benefits come down out of the stratosphere, GM has no hope. The adversarial and almost dysfunctional relationship between unions and management must be replaced with cooperation because the world is a different place now.
It's because of the *****ed up capital market that drove the brightest minds of this country towards various get-rich-quick schemes like working on useless crap like Facebook. Airplanes -- nothing new since the jet age Cars -- nothing new since the combustion engine Medicine -- not sure, but heart disease and cancer still kill, and diabetes is still incurable Energy -- still the same options, plus exploding Li ion batteries The only major breakthrough is the internet, and we have yet to see its power harnessed for anything worthwhile (is Internet good for anything other than Youtube, Facebook and pr0n?).
