Australia already has a First Home Owners Grant to “help” people get into one of the most overinflated investment bubbles in the world.  Free money has been handed out to Australians as part of stimulus package, which will cost this country dearly in the future too. Now we have the Holden Owners Grant. Not actually a government grant of any kind, just clever advertising that will no doubt convince thousands of uneducated Australian’s that there’s never been a better time to buy an overpriced, poorly engineered piece of devaluing steel.

Whether it’s a car, a house, computer, clothing, or so on, if people can’t afford it it’s either one of those items that only a special few can afford to buy (which is part of it’s appeal), or quite simply the price is too high. For example, people pay big money for clothing brands like Prada. It’s high prices and label is what makes people aspire to wearing that label. Now obviously Prada are making a profit at their current prices, so their business model works. By selling only to the “elite”, they can turn a decent profit.

On the other end of the spectrum though is the brands that need economies of scale to make their products profitable. Holden is one of these brands. They need the masses to buy their cars, and in order to get the masses to purchase your product it needs to be affordable.

If these items aren’t affordable, quite simply your business is going to fail. Although housing is a tricky one to compare this all with, it’s still a similar situation. People can’t afford to buy houses at it’s current value so there needs to be a grant to get people into the market. All this does is keep the prices inflated and in the long term helps no one except for the “investors” already in the market.

A so called Holden Buyers Grant is just ridiculous. Obviously they can’t move Holdens at the moment at their recommended retail price, so they need the grant to sell their cars. Australians are more likely to buy cars from Asia and Europe as they are either cheaper, or a similar price and of a much higher standard.

For Holden it’s a simple case of provide the market with what they want, or fall down. Unfortunately they and many other Australian businesses fail to see this. In Australia I foresee this crash being harder than any other that we have had in the past, as it is going to be an enormous readjustment for our businesses, and as a result our people.

Post from: r0dman.com

Holden Owners Grant

It’s well known that most Gen Y’s aren’t very loyal in a workplace sense. They are happy to jump ship after a short period of time just for some extra money here or there. Apparently the way we were brought up, we have a short attention span or something. I’m not sure, someone was telling me about it once but I wasn’t really listening… haha!

Does this extend further than just employment though? Local car manufacturer Holden is in a heap of financial trouble at the moment – being down the food chain from General Motors isn’t the best place to be in an economic crisis. Talking to the Baby Boomers, they think it would be a great loss to this country to lose Holden, but talking to the Generation Y’s paints a completely different picture. The general consensus is that Holden have been producing poorly built, inefficient and overpriced cars for too long now. Technology has moved in leaps and bounds for European and Japanese cars, but in Australia we are essentially using the same outdated technology as the yanks. It’s nobody’s fault that Holden is going under but their own, and good riddance.

In this specific example I see a crash and “the world coming down” as a massive positive. The US and Australia manufacturers will be brought to their knees and forced to produce more efficient cars and work with a business model that actually makes money rather than lose it. Lots of other people just see the doom and gloom and not the positives from it. These are usually the older generations.

Now does that make us positive or negative? Loyal or disloyal? Short term I can acknowledge that peoples lives will be “ruined”, but once again I see a positive in that. Without making too much of a generalisation about Holden employees, the meaning in their life is in their car, their TV and their Jim Beam. Now while I like cars, watch too much TV and enjoy the drink, I’d be stoked to live in a world where all three didn’t exist. Others would be literally lost, but before long find some real meaning in their life, and enjoy it for real rather than all the superficial crap that we live for nowadays.

While bankruptcy and losing your car and what not is a big negative in the short term, it offers such a huge positive in the long term.

All of this doom and gloom has enormous positives out of the other side, yet the Baby Boomers struggle to see this. Why so?

My father for one would be sad to see the Aussie icon that is Holden lost to the Global Financial Crisis, but I’m happy for it to sink. House prices crashing, banks falling, economies crumbling, exchange rates not so good. Baby boomers would faint if this stuff wasn’t sugar coated when it all happens. However what is bad for some is great for others, you just need to be able to open your mind and explore the situation, rather than just look at it with your blinkers on. Gen Y’s are able to see the positives in this situation much more easily than the Baby Boomers.

Gen Y’s are loyal, Baby Boomers just can’t see that in order for their country to become strong again they need to cut off the dead wood first.

Post from: r0dman.com

Are Generation Y’s disloyal?