The New Obama Fuel Compliant Car is here!!

Steve Jobs, innovative liberal, revolutionizes communication, but he had to go to China to build his products for a decent rate. So why when Apple does outsourcing it is OK, but Romney it isn't?

Seems a double standard, well meaning liberals get a pass from the press.

FYI...I don't approve of Apple outsourcing to China...it's not OK.

Honestly archer, what chance would Henry Ford have in today's regulatory environment of securing the capital necessary to start an automobile manufacturing company from scratch? Why did Tucker fail when he tried to get a new car company going in the post war boom period? You and I both know the answer to that, don't we? Government intrusion and regulations that protected the Big 3 from start-up competition. Just think of what would be necessary to get a car approved in today's regulatory environment and how long it would take to clear all the hurdles placed in front of an entrepreneur by the government. You can't do it, it takes too long to get the approval that you are complying with all the regulations. An entrepreneur today is almost by necessity required to begin with an existing platform that they would have to purchase from an existing manufacturer.

What happened to the family station wagon all of us grew up with? It got regulated out of existence, which is why we now have minivans. At the time, vans had different regulations than passenger cars did, which is why a passenger vehicle to replace the station wagon was developed using that platform. Guess what is going to happen to the minivan with a 55 mpg CAFE standard. Same for the "Outback" line from Subaru. They increased the ground clearance on their existing vehicles to get around the CAFE Standards in place at the time. The 2013 Volkswagen Jetta that is sold by VWoA, both gas and diesel model, is detuned from what is available in Europe because of US regulations. VW suspended sales of their diesel models for a couple years in the middle of the last decade until they managed to get a motor that was approved for use in all 50 States. Diesel prices are up compared to gasoline because the federal government imposed a stricter sulfur standard on diesel fuel than the one that exists for gasoline, not to mention they levy a higher tax on each gallon of diesel sold. That is driving up the cost of everything that you buy, making it harder for those on the margins to afford everything from food to clothing to school supplies.

You want to know what is destroying the middle class? It's the federal government and its regulations. My father could repair anything that went wrong with the family vehicles when I was a lad. They were simple mechanical beasts, easy to diagnose what was wrong and relatively inexpensive to repair. Today, thanks to CAFE, emission, computer and safety regulations, there is no possible means by which he could diagnose and repair the car if it didn't start, there's easily 20 things that could be wrong with it. Not only do you have to worry about fuel, spark and air like you did back in the day, now you have to worry that the fuel pressure is 0.1 psi too low, or that the brake switch is bad, or your throttle position or cam position sensor is kaput, the park/neutral switch is fried, that your Mass Air Flow sensor isn't working, that something is wrong with the electronic ignition, that the sensor under the seat that controls the airbag deployment is on the fritz, the anti-lock braking sensors wont initialize - and that's only a partial list of what could potentially prevent the car from starting. The engine and even the transmission are completely computer controlled. In many cases it is less expensive to replace the car than it is to diagnose and then repair it. To fix a transmission can easily run you $5K. You tell me what that does to the middle class family budget. The washing machine in the home is computer controlled, as is the refrigerator and even the frigging toaster! Lose the board and you've lost the appliance because it will cost you as much or more to repair it as it is going to cost you to replace it.

My mom had the same washing machine from the time I was old enough to know what a washing machine was until my kid brother graduated from college. It could be repaired at a fraction of the cost of replacement, and so it was. I bought an energy efficient, electronically controlled, front loading washer from Sears and had to scrap it 6 years later due to a board failing. The new board alone was going to cost me 50% of the cost of a new machine, plus the added cost of the labor for a qualified technician to come out, diagnose the problem, order the new part, leave, and come back a couple of days later to tear the thing apart and replace the board and I'd get a whopping 30 day warranty on the repair once all that money was spent. Why are washers and dryers computer controlled you ask? To comply with new federal energy standards for appliances, of course. You can't achieve the necessary efficiency without the bloody circuit boards.

And you want to blame wealth disparity on what again? The single largest expense faced by the middle class is the cost of goods and services which meet the regulatory costs and burdens imposed by the federal government.

Are you really saying that innovators cannot create around the regulations? I say BS. I have more faith in the American inventors that you apparently. You won't get me to complain about regulations that keep our children safe, that help keep our air and water clean. I grew up around Buffalo NY, an unhealthy environment for sure....it is a much nicer place to live and raise children now that there are regulations that limit what corporations can spew into our air. Lake Erie was dying, we lived on that lake (the Canadian side) and watched the pollution threaten not only the people who lived there but our major industry...Fishing. It's so much better now, because of regulations on the American side that stopped sending the crap from our factories to a rural area of Canada that relied on that environment for their living. Regulations will hopefully prevent another Love Canal incident......you may not care what you breath, what is in our water, if we protect our children, but I sure do. Boo f**king hoo to the corporations that had to comply.

It's not the corporations that suffered under the regulations archer, it's your beloved middle class that is paying the price. No one said a single word about pollutants from factories other than you. In fact, none of the regulations about how the computer in the car must function to be in compliance with federal regulations has a single thing to do with Love Canal or the pollution of water supplies by factories. The switches that makes sure you put your foot on the brake and that the car is in Park before you are able to turn the ignition switch have absolutely nothing to do with Love Canal or pollution of water supplies by factories either.

It is the middle class who are being injured at unnecessarily high rates in collisions because cars are lighter today to comply with CAFE regulations that pay the price of the regulations. Not only are they more likely to be injured because the car is lighter, those lighter components (aluminum instead of steel in the wheels, control arms, suspension components, engine components - plastic in the door handles, dashboards) cost more to produce, don't last as long and are more likely to fail. That drives up both the cost of purchasing and maintaining the vehicle for the middle class, not the manufacturer. The manufacturer simply buys the more expensive components necessary to meet the regulations, marks them up, and passes the higher cost on to the middle class buying the product. The cost of the regulations imposed by the federal government is a friend of too big to fail industry. The higher it is, the less likely they are to face new competition. You want us to install a $2 million dollar filter in all of our stacks? Cool - that's another $50 million in capital a competitor has to secure before they can enter the market and compete against our products. Existing companies love to see more regulations imposed, it protects their market position. The more expensive it becomes to attempt to build a new car company from scratch, the happier GM, Ford and Chrysler are.

You keep going in circles PrintSmith.....weren't you talking about washing machines a bit ago? hard to keep up....it's regulations ruin the economy and the middle class, now it's just certain regulations, Now you are arguing that it's cars that kill people not drivers......can I assume you are on the side that guns kill people, not the person who shoots the gun. So confusing......

On the whole I think regulations make our world a better place, and help grow the middle class. You are taking one little example and using it to justify your cause of getting government out of our lives no matter how it may hurt us, I just don't buy it.

and please....if you would learn to condense your ideas into shorter paragraphs and summarize, maybe you would get more reasoned responses. It could be my advanced age, but I fall asleep before I get through most of your posts.

Regulations are killing us- simply killing American business and American jobs.

They are just devastating- no other word for it.

For every 1 good regulation- there's 200 more that are damaging. That's the honest truth.

I work in the energy industry and I see the massive damage from them every day, and the jobs lost, and the impact it has on economic activity.

It's killin us. We have regulated ourselves out of 30 million jobs- maybe more.

BearMtnHIB wrote: Regulations are killing us- simply killing American business and American jobs.

They are just devastating- no other word for it.

For every 1 good regulation- there's 200 more that are damaging. That's the honest truth.

I work in the energy industry and I see the massive damage from them every day, and the jobs lost, and the impact it has on economic activity.

It's killin us.

See PrintSmith.....Bear can get his opinion out there in 5 lines.

If you want just an idea of how regulations affect us- read this.

I have heard that just in the last 4 years- there's about 5,000 new regulations.

In 2010, this study estimates the damage of regulations - costing Americans an estimated $1 trillion or more each year.

Yet, explicit taxes and spending are only part of the total burden that government places on Americans. The rest comes in the form of hidden taxes imposed by government regulations. These "regulatory taxes" appear on no budget or balance sheet, but are very real--costing Americans an estimated $1 trillion or more each year.

These costs are increasing. In fiscal year 2009, new regulations costing more than $13 billion per year were adopted by the Bush and Obama Administrations, the highest annual total since 1992. Much more is in the works. Anyone who uses electricity, drives a car, has a job, visits a doctor, owns stocks, or patronizes a bank will be affected by the additional regulation being advanced by the Obama Administration.

Archer- what do you think our economy would be like with another 1 trillion a year in economic activity?
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/03/red-tape-rising-regulation-in-the-obama-era