Interested in learning about Holdemans

[Josh]

America has safety and emissions standards on trucks the third world doesn’t.

[temporal1]

jbg:
.. I am against patriarchism ..

i’m not. (i think) in general it’s served the world well.
there are glaring exceptions of abuse. (i think) it’s a contemporary popular failure to deny the majority due to minority failures.
this method punishes all - and STILL FAILS to stop glaring exceptions of abuse/sin.

within Christian marriage, 2 become 1:
Mark 10:8
https://biblehub.com/mark/10-8.htm

…7‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,
8and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”…

When my husband owns a truck or tools, higher education, clothing, or other, WE own these things and mutually benefit from them; if he makes poor decisions, WE suffer - ditto for “me” -

i believe in headship order. it’s valuable. it’s sad to so frequently allow sorry exceptions come at such high prices to all.
this is primitive human thinking.

the effort is best to strive for God’s authentic design and will. it’s more challenging, but the rewards are great.

“the world” loves overly simplistic messages - it’s easier to control masses. primitive, but often “temporarily” effective.
nuances that are essential to quality of life, on earth and in heaven, are beyond the scope of the world’s ability.

in Christian reality:
men and women are different.
in marriage, 2 become 1.
God is supreme, there is God ordained order that follows/headship.

most cultures and faiths follow this general order, since before Jesus lived on earth.
i’m not sure i know of a culture that does not respect marriages of other cultures, and other cultural ways. there may be significant disagreements, but marriages are observed.

of itself, patriarchy has served the world well.
sin is sin, it’s not patriarchy, it’s another matter, causing damage whereever it goes.

[Ken]

America has safety and emissions standards on trucks the third world doesn’t.

No, it's mostly the tax code. These are all modern multinational companies like Toyota, Hyundi, Nissan, and Mitsubishi. They all know how to make modern safe vehicles (often better than we do) and they all import millions of small economical cars into the US just fine. The reason they don't also import smaller economical trucks is the punitive tax code which imposes 25% import duties on light trucks but not cars. It is actually called the "chicken tax" Look it up. It is the reason your folks have to pay a fortune for new trucks these days and why they have no economical foreign alternatives available: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chicken-tax.asp

And note: The foreign brands like Toyota and Nissan that do sell into the US market do so by manufacturing American-specific models inside the US like the Toyota Tundra (made in San Antonio) and Nissan Titan (made in Mississippi) because the Chicken Tax blocks them from importing cheaper foreign-made models.

Either way it means you pay a LOT more for trucks and have a LOT less selection than you would otherwise have without the 25% import duty on light trucks.

[Josh]

I used to live in Australia which doesn’t have America’s tax code or import duties, as there are no cars or trucks made in Australia anymore.

A light truck costs a lot more. You can get a small 4x2 Hilux or Ranger for what a loaded 1500 class costs here.

I don’t think stopping making vehicles in America and importing them instead will make things better. What about all those lost jobs?

And no, cars on other countries do NOT meet American safety or emission standards. It doesn’t matter how big the company making them is.

[Ken]

I used to live in Australia which doesn’t have America’s tax code or import duties, as there are no cars or trucks made in Australia anymore.

A light truck costs a lot more. You can get a small 4x2 Hilux or Ranger for what a loaded 1500 class costs here.

I don’t think stopping making vehicles in America and importing them instead will make things better. What about all those lost jobs?

And no, cars on other countries do NOT meet American safety or emission standards. It doesn’t matter how big the company making them is.

Many Ford, GMC, and Ram trucks are already made in Canada and Mexico. NAFTA gives them a tax advantage over trucks made in Asia or elsewhere in Latin America. Protectionism is one reason why, as you say, you can only buy ultra expensive Platinum and Lariat type models and not simple base trucks much of the time. But if you are happy paying $15,000 more for a truck than you otherwise might have to I guess it's all OK.

[ken_sylvania]

I used to live in Australia which doesn’t have America’s tax code or import duties, as there are no cars or trucks made in Australia anymore.

A light truck costs a lot more. You can get a small 4x2 Hilux or Ranger for what a loaded 1500 class costs here.

I don’t think stopping making vehicles in America and importing them instead will make things better. What about all those lost jobs?

And no, cars on other countries do NOT meet American safety or emission standards. It doesn’t matter how big the company making them is.

Many Ford, GMC, and Ram trucks are already made in Canada and Mexico. NAFTA gives them a tax advantage over trucks made in Asia or elsewhere in Latin America. Protectionism is one reason why, as you say, you can only buy ultra expensive Platinum and Lariat type models and not simple base trucks much of the time. But if you are happy paying $15,000 more for a truck than you otherwise might have to I guess it's all OK.

Wait... what???
You're saying the reason we can't buy $20,000 pickups is because of the chicken tax, right? How does a 25% tax on a $20,000 truck make it $15,000 more expensive?

[Ken]

I used to live in Australia which doesn’t have America’s tax code or import duties, as there are no cars or trucks made in Australia anymore.

A light truck costs a lot more. You can get a small 4x2 Hilux or Ranger for what a loaded 1500 class costs here.

I don’t think stopping making vehicles in America and importing them instead will make things better. What about all those lost jobs?

And no, cars on other countries do NOT meet American safety or emission standards. It doesn’t matter how big the company making them is.

Many Ford, GMC, and Ram trucks are already made in Canada and Mexico. NAFTA gives them a tax advantage over trucks made in Asia or elsewhere in Latin America. Protectionism is one reason why, as you say, you can only buy ultra expensive Platinum and Lariat type models and not simple base trucks much of the time. But if you are happy paying $15,000 more for a truck than you otherwise might have to I guess it's all OK.

Wait... what???
You're saying the reason we can't buy $20,000 pickups is because of the chicken tax, right? How does a 25% tax on a $20,000 truck make it $15,000 more expensive?

Several related but separate issues are at play:

1. The Chicken tax, which is a 25% import tax on all light trucks that are manufactured outside of NAFTA (CA, USA, and MX) means that no car company bothers to import light trucks made in Asia, South, America, or Europe. It would be uneconomical. That means most trucks sold in the US are made by just 3 manufacturers with a smidgen of competition from US-made Toyota and Nissan trucks. It is a textbook oligopoly where the three main players can tacitly collude to control pricing and the market: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oligopoly.asp

2. The economics of truck sales are such that Ford, GM, and Ram make most of their money on expensive markups. Ford would MUCH rather sell $60,000 F-150 Platinum models or $73,000 Limited models than $30,000 XL base models. Because that $30,000 markup for the Platinum model or $44,000 markup for the Limited is mostly trim and electronics that costs Ford very little to install. Most of the base models are actually sold into fleet sales where the economics are different. Ford knows that a big municipal public works department buying 100 identical trucks, or an agency like the Forest Service buying hundreds of them per year isn't going to pay for all the extra fluff. But for the ordinary consumer, base models can be extremely hard to find because neither Ford nor the dealers have any real incentive to promote low-margin base models when they can sell high-markup luxury models instead. Look at the current price range on F-150 models. They range from $29K for the XL model to $73K for the Limited model. https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/ Do you really think the Limited model has $44K more iron and steel and technology than the XL model? Of course not. That's a huge amount of extra profit for the dealer and manufacturer.

3. The fact that the Big-3 truck makers face virtually no foreign competition means they can get away with these pricing schemes much easier in the truck market than they could in the car market. If Chevy tried to play the same pricing games with say it's mid-sized sedan, the Chevy Malibu, consumers would just shrug and buy a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry or Nissan Sentra or Hyundai Sonata or Kia Forte or Subaru/Mazda/WV etc. instead. No one is going to buy a $60,000 Chevy Malibu no matter how nice the trim is. But consumers don't have that option in the light truck market where the Big-3 have an iron-grip on the market due to the Chicken Tax and all three play the same exact game in terms of their model pricing.

In the end, and spinning back to the subject of this thread. That is why plain folks sometimes have to buy very expensive pickups for work related reasons even if they might otherwise not want to do so.

[ohio jones]

... there are no cars or trucks made in Australia anymore.

I hadn't realized GM's Holdeman division had been discontinued, but evidently that's the case.

[Josh]

... there are no cars or trucks made in Australia anymore.

I hadn't realized GM's Holdeman division had been discontinued, but evidently that's the case.

On one of my last trips to Australia, I made sure to rent a Commodore from Hertz, whose VIN began with a 6, as it should. Excellent rear wheel drive cars. Sort of like what we wish a Malibu or Impala could be.

[ohio jones]

Sort of like what we wish a Malibu or Impala could be.

Or what the G8 and SS were, though unfortunately not popular enough in the American market.