the employee's of one of the supply houses my company uses used to call one of their fellow supply houses main employee "Gollum".

they would look up parts in their global system, see the other location had a significant amount, call for a parts transfer between locations, and they would be denied every time, no matter the quantity.

so i don't ever plan for locations to be agreeable to transferring parts between locations :)

Have you driven through Detroit? I was there twice last year.

They were pushing us that way anyway. We just got our latest quote to reup employee health insurance. Biggest increase we have seen since the gov mandated employer provided insurance in the first place.

Some Toyota dealers are like that.

So if Dealer A calls to trade (they can see each other's inventories online) for, say, a RAV4 Hybrid (currently 6 days supply), Dealer B might say "OK, for two Tacomas" or whatever is hottest in their market.

Factor in dealer cash and trip incentives and suddenly they stop trading and start hoarding incentivized series. It also explains why it's usually best to shop new at month end when the incentives expire, motivating dealers to become more flexible.

Oh the insurance middle men are just laughing their way to the bank. I hear the doctors all the time talking about insurance will deny this or that, or we need to admit this patient, or they will never get the outpatient surgery.

We need medicare-for-all to reduce prices and remove the burden on employers. Employers can pay their employees more because they won't be saddled with the cost of healthcare, and they don't have to worry about predicting future prices or hunting for cheaper plans. Employees can change jobs, change employers or change careers without fear that they will lose their insurance. Losing their job won't put a person in a health risk. No one will be denied for any type of situation or preexisting condition based on their plan. Private insurance can still add supplementary plans like they currently do for medicare or for rich people wanting more coverage for elective procedures. Doctors can focus on serving everyone equally without spending so much time dealing with logistics. People won't have to file bankruptcy because of healthcare costs. I can keep going on.

Right? That's just a thin veneer.

Or they do the cheapest things first for years until you almost die from cancer :iono:

I am not entirely against universal healthcare. But I am not exactly for it simply based on who we are trusting to run it. Has nothing to do with burdon. We are well under the requirement to provide insurance to our employees. We do it anyway and they don't pay a dime into it.

There is no fucking MARKET right now.
Their system is crumbling with the rest of the industry.
Get that through your thick skull!

Detroit is a great example of what will happen to the auto industry.
It was booming.
It fell apart.
It was slowly rebuilding it's self as something totally different.
If you travel just a short distance you can see the wreckage of the former glory.
It has a veneer that looks nice in one small section but the reality is the rest of it still sucks.
It will never see it's former glory again.

Actually even that is all in danger now since they were rebuilding on tourist dollars. There are no tourists. Decades worth of gains will be lost quickly.

Why? Government health insurance has a higher satisfaction score than others.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/186527/...satisfied.aspx

I’m sure you do that in order to offer a competitive employment package for employee recruitment and retention.

Politics.
Party stand.
Politics.
Politics.
Politics.
Rhetoric.
Politics.
Party stand.
More rhetoric.
Blah blah blah.

Ok boomer

Why? My above example was gov healthcare. They kept saying he had strep throat. Nope, it was esophageal cancer. I also have plenty of buddies I went to school with that served. They bitch about the VA hospitals all the time. One of them had to wait years to have back surgery. Took them forever to approve it, he was injured while deployed. It was years after he got out that they finally took care of him.

We take care of our employees because we are employee owned.

As I have said, I am not against the idea of universal health care. I just have no faith in the way it will be run. Look at the last time this happened where it was required that large businesses take care of their employees and give them insurance. That was all fine and dandy except they allowed insurance companies to gouge businesses. Premiums went up drastically, we were used to 7-10% increases. Now 30% is normal.

I hate this retort. It's like saying because you are older your opinion and experiences don't matter.

I better follow Tcoat out the door. Hopefully he went to get a chilli dog I am hungry.

This runs against your obviously limited narrative, but after last weekend MTD Toyota Portland Region sales were up +37% across the board compared to the same time in March that was down -39%. And those sales were mostly in states with limited social distancing rules in place.

I won't have this weekend's sales data until tomorrow morning but believe the trend will continue with dozens of last minute retail cash back and lease incentives I posted earlier. Next month should be even better with stronger incentives.

During last week's Zoom meeting, most North American manufacturing facilities were said to be on track to reopen May 4th.