Just Driving Around in John Voight’s Car

The once great cerberus of the auto industry¹ has quietly fallen and there were no warning signs. What to do now, that’s the question that plagues our government and is all over the news. I, however, have a very simple answer, but you’ll need to drink the Kool Aid before you’re ready to learn about it.

Nothing. Or Everything. But since the Beltway Boys probably don’t know a whole lot about running a profitable car company², I put my money on doing nothing. If you want to support the workers that may, nay quite possibly will, be let off, take the billions of dollars we are currently pouring into these losing propositions and give them unemployment pay and retraining. Mind you, I’m coming up with this essentially in the background of my thoughts all day, and putting it on digital paper with about an hour of thought³, so I’m sure if I quit my job (or my job was to solve these problems) and did some more detailed analysis, it could be more easily seen that throwing good money after bad doesn’t work. So, rather than continue to invest the public’s money in companies that don’t know how to spend it, are weighed down with legacy debts and obligations (both pension and bank), and are trying to turn around in an already weak consumer market, we should focus on the smaller things that have been proposed. For example, rather than telling Chrysler they MUST do some deal with Fiat within 30 days to get more money (~$6 billion more), we could focus on helping them restructure their pension and labor problems by leaning on labor to be more pliable and at the same time lean on the creditors to actually allow for a successful restructuring. All this is easier said than done; Cerberus has already poured billions of dollars into Chrysler to no avail and both Ford and GM have been trying to restructure themselves for years⁴ and they still don’t have a clue. But these are the people that we should give more billions to^5,9?

So, rather than focus on pouring more and more money into the “winners” of our economy, they should focus on what they’re supposedly good at: crafting laws that help these businesses get through this process successfully or taking public funds to help out of work people get through this crisis. Let’s face it, in times like these, you can’t continue to believe that the economic behemoths of the past will continue to be that in the future. The economy has changed; Detroit just refused to change with it. So I’d say that we take our lumps now and if they go under, they go under. But the government should have been prepared for such an occurence and be ready to bite the bullet and retrain those workers that want retraining. Those that don’t can go F themselves; it’s because of them that we are forced to support old, outdated ways of doing business. If you want to live on welfare and not take the FREE training that I’m proposing, then you don’t deserve the government’s help, but I’m willing to live with the system we have and support you on subsistence living for the rest of your days. Help those that want to be helped is essentially what I’m saying, and that’s what we should be prepared to do¹⁰.

In addition to the autoworkers themselves⁶, there is the general defense related motif that is brought up every time our mangy three headed dog has some financial fleas. And maybe back in the day this made sense, i.e. we need to keep our auto manufacturing at home to have the capability to build tanks and what not in the event of a war. However, we’ve already solved this problem by providing incentives for foreign car companies to build their cars in the U.S. with U.S. labor. Subsequently, I fail to see how foreign ownership of the auto industry changes the fact that if we went to war with Japan tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to nationalize those factories and use the workers there just like we would have done if they were U.S. owned. And if these foreign companies decided to shift their production away from the U.S. all we have to do is put such a high tariff on imported vehicles⁷, that some American should be able to domestically create a better car for cheaper, which would revitalize the maimed, but not dead, American auto industry.

I guess it all comes down to a belief in the ingenuity of the American worker and businessman. Technically, this applies to their ability to restructure their current agreements, and if they can then more power to them, but if they can’t, why shouldn’t we help train/retrain these workers in industries that are actually growing? These industries could likely use some new workers that hopefully come with new ideas to combine their previous experiences with their new training to potentially help us get out of these economic woes we find ourselves in. We need them to do so, otherwise how will we ever ride the next bubble right back to the top?

Catch you on the flipside^8.

¹ Does anyone else find it ironic/odd that we used to have (arguably still do…) the Big Three in the auto industry and then one of them was taken over by a private equity firm named after the three-headed dog of greek mythology? I’m the only one? Well alrighty then.
² Neither does anyone in Detroit, for that matter.
³ Although, I’m also watching the History Channel. Battles BC is an awesome show.
⁴ I was being sarcastic earlier when I said there were no warning signs.
⁵ I don’t care that GM has a new CEO. I can’t believe that Wagoner wouldn’t listen to his COO, at least a little bit. This is a typical management change: all for show, but no substance.
⁶ Let’s not kid ourselves, labor unions historically have supported Democrats so they have to take first billing here. This is because they are both stupid. In an economic system, the people at the top are no more important the people on the bottom, but the people on the bottom aren’t any more important than the people on the top. It takes all kinds, and neither side realizes this.
⁷ From specific countries if need be, but could apply generally to all imported vehicles.
⁸ Since it didn’t fit at all, I’ll put it here: I worked out tonight for three days in a row.
⁹ In reading through this, I realized that these lines rhyme. Nice.
¹⁰ This is, quite naturally, a slippery slope as it will be difficult to say when we should help retrain workers. For example, if you foresaw the problem and wanted to leave your job prior to being fired in the inevitable bankruptcy, you’d have to pay for it yourself, while stupider, less thoughtful people wouldn’t have tried to better themselves on their own. Is this fair or just? Probably not, but it’s the way it’d probably have to go down.