Auto mental choices

People and cars are funny, it sometime goes against the what we think. I have a 94 Ford Aerostar and it has run very well with few problems. My daughter has a 06 Ford and it has had one problem have another.
I have friends who after this summer of high gas prices traded in a Honda for another SUV for the wife to do stop and go driving around town. Crash safety being an issue for them. I have a Prius which they liked, but my first Prius was totaled after a 25 mph front end collision with a Chevy Blazer.

Auto Bailouts

We have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Was it 77 or 78 when we had the gas shortage. Carter declared war, and many laughed. The auto makers made some fuel efficient cars and we never bought them (remember the change in the Firebird). Then there was the rise of trucks and SUV's, it seem to me they were giving us what we wanted, or was it the advertising. There wasn't really any need until now to have all those fuel efficient cars, they were making money and stock prices were high. Retooling cost money and the they weren't seeing any demand that wasn't already being met and the SUV's where still selling well. So was the business model bad, not quick to change, or is the issue with the UAW, or are the consumer to be faulted for not caring about fuel savings until now. Then if sales drop off a cliff and credit stops you really have no were to go.

Bailout better spent

Stephen Flynn’s book The Edge of Disaster he make the case for improvements to our infrastructure as a matter of national security and resilience to natural disasters. The examples highlighted in the book point to very serious problem that we are in denial about.

Direction?

I have been reading the Shield of Achilles by Philip Bobbitt and it could be that this all is just another step in becoming what he calls a Market-State vice a Nation-State. Now I haven’t finished the book yet (about 2/3 complete) but I can recommend it as a possible reading of the past and a direction to the future. The current events to me would be a reason to breakdown this divide between Government and Business, but not along what has gone on in the past but a new order that is in line with the Constitution.

Market-state

The country as a whole frakked things up, saved little, spent wildly, ran around talking shit and now we have the bill. It doesn't help when we can't decide who and what we are going to be and how we should go forward. We are going to have to pay and work to find direction as a nation. It not just the accounting rules that need to be changed, but a redirect of the country and culture.

Well it's been awhile

It should be reported that things when a ground at the time of the last post. As the spouse's job was lost, and we were not prepared. Our daughter had just come out of a financial hole which cost us some money.

In the rush to put things back together, I got a job in a factory, but that's another story. It seems that with a lot of good luck we came out the other side much better off, which is a good thing because the daughter got back into another hole, which we pulled her out, again.

The plan had been to move, but now that is on hold, pending getting our daughter on track. The housing market is holding up, but how long will that last. We are on the edge of break even, I think, but I am sure it's not going to move up, so we are not going to get any better deals in the future.

The spouse's new job is 75% travel, so I am pretty much here alone most of the time in a big house that we keep for the dogs and cats. Sounds like madness? You think you are planning things out with some sort of order, yet at this point I can't say I see any in our life's.

I guess there is going to come a time, sooner that later that all this is going to fall apart.