> GM's trouble isn't so much their products--those have improved significantly in recent years. Their real trouble is the experiment in socialism that the unions dragged them into. According to a newspaper article today, the average GM worker gets $28/hour, which is totally insane. And that's before benefits. Remember, most of those jobs are unskilled or semi-skilled. I would be surprised if any of us Rinkies get anywhere near that much.

When Henry Ford more than doubled his workers' salaries (while simultaniously cutting working hours) in 1914, everyone was convinced that it would drive him into the poorhouse. $5 / day was as insane then as $30 / hour is today. And yet it was as significant a factor in Ford's success as the assembly line.

"Nearly everything in this country is too high priced. The only thing that should be high priced in this country is the man that works. Wages must not come down, they must not even stay on their present level; they must go up. And even that is not sufficient of itself -- we must see to it that the increased wages are not taken away from the people by increased prices that do not represent increased values."
--Henry Ford, New York Times, November 22, 1929

He wasn't entirely right, but he's a good case study to show that increasing wages to "insane" levels can benefit the employer as much as the employee.

wintermute