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Actually, I think Endo has some points. Just to address stuff I'm familiar with:

When I got out of college, my first car was a stripped down Ford Fairlane ; it cost me $2900. Now the average starting salary for my profession (can't speak to wages) has gone up by factor of about 5.5 since then. Factor up the car cost by that and you come to about $16,000. Now I don't know about Fords (they don't enter much into my thinking now), but around here the $16,000 will get you some pretty decent cars. They're certainly not presteigous--more low-end, just like the Fairlane was. And truth be told, they're better cars than my Fairlane was--in terms of mileage, durability, safety, handling, and almost anything else you care to name.

Endo gets all chuffed about regs. There were alot; and they drove auto engineers to distraction. No doubt they added to costs; there's a price for everything. My take on regs is that they don't happen if a company/industry is taking into account all the factors the public deems important. If they don't, the public puts pressure on the govt., who puts pressure on the industry. Pressure group democracy, if you would. Would some of these changes have happened without regs? One can argue endlessly; but I tend to think mostly not.

There also have been changes in manufacturing. Instead of endless, pricey option packages (both reg-related and not), you have a much more standard car now. Standardization lets you do all sorts of stuff better--design, manufacture, support, etc.

Companies have changed too, along with exec styles and compensation. Coming out of the 1960's, the favored style was a conglomerate. In theory, these are designed to offset market weakness in one area with strength in another. With these, your second level of exec was the star of the show. No CEO could be expert in everything. Now the style is to have single-line, more focused companies. No more "Baby Bootee Heavy Armaments Division". CEOs have to be more specialized and focused. Which means they cost more to get and maintain. But I do agree with spade that things have gotten out of hand.

There is basically only one choice that upper managment makes--things will sorta stay the same or things will sorta change. Everything else springs from that. As an engineer, I'm trained to mostly believe the first while allowing for the second. Methinks that a number of managers have gotten too attached to the first; and it's come back to bite them in the b*tt. A perfectly human thing to do IMHO; if it wasn't that they're hired to plan for change and bumps in the road, I could excuse it. In the end, I come down to thinking that there's no excuse to not do the job you were paid (well) to do.

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