Remember that 25,000 layoffs will occur over a period of time concurrent with the normal attrition of, you guessed it- 25,000 present employees.

So basically GM won't be doing any hiring for a few years. But the misfortunes of GM (and to a lesser extent Ford) are not at all related to a 'soft' economy but to management misdirection of company resources going back to the early 90's. Remember that by the late 90's, the big three had all posted record profits and had chipped away significantly at import market share. But they chose to take an easy route to profit building and promoting high-profit (overpriced), truck-based platforms instead of putting those profits into R & D for the much trickier auto market. They made a lot of money in a short time and kept share prices up and paid out dividends. That is American style corporate strategy-for better and for worse. The Asian corporations take a much longer view. (Matsushita electric has a 100 year corporate strategy!)

I think there's a far simpler explanation for slumping sailboat sales: people don't want sailboats. They want powerboats, PWC's, dirt bikes, ATV's and the like. And why wouldn't they? When have you ever seen a slick TV ad for a sailing catamaran? When have you ever seen a slick magazine ad for same in a general interest periodical? I never have. To an extent this is reflective of pop culture, where only stodgy old farts would ever get on a sailboat! All the young, cool, sexy people have engines on their boats-BIG ones! Sailboats are for live-aboard misfits/recluses and big, fat cigar smoking crime bosses! And of course sailboats are slow and boring as hell-EVERYBODY knows that!

Part of this is the industry's 'fault'. They have not advertised their product to the extent that it could have been so that the above situation of ignorance WRT sailcraft exists. Part of it is our fault as owners, but then we did not know the job of promoting the sport had fallen to us. After all, most of us SPEND rather that MAKE money at this.
No matter whose 'fault' it is, we can all do a good turn for the sport by taking a newbie sailing. I know it's a cliche by now but it's still works!. That's how I got into sailing-a friend took me out on his H16. And I have yet to take a newbie on a cat who did not come away saying something like "Wow, that was absolutely the funnest thing I have ever done! When can we go again?" I know it can be a bit of a pain since it is so much more responsibility and explaining and trying to keep them on the correct side of the boat (and you can forget about race practice!) but in the end the sport needs it.

Step Up!

Jimbo