If you’re bound for Congress to sing the poverty blues, it helps if you’re not traveling by multimillion-dollar corporate jet. Good God. No wonder the U.S. auto industry has the collective net worth of a roach coach in East LA. Thanks and a wink through the aviator goggles to Steve Benen at Political Animal.
Late update: I’m no economist, as Herself will be only too happy to confirm. I don’t even play one on TV. But I’m having a hard time feeling any sympathy for the Big Three automakers, who seem likely to ride their private jets back to Motor City without fat wads of the taxpayers’ cash tucked neatly away in their vest pockets.
I’ve owned exactly two American-made cars — a ’64 Chevy Biscayne, which I loved, right up to point at which I drove it into a train, and a 1996 Ford F-150, which proved so evil a vehicle that an exasperated mechanic told me, “Mr. O’Grady, you don’t need a mechanic, you need an exorcist.”
Something happened in the three decades between Biscayne and Beelzebub, and it wasn’t good. That’s why Herself drives a 2002 Subaru Outback and I drive an ’05 Subaru Forester. My ’83 Toyota 4WD is still functional, but in need of repair, which it will not get anytime soon. Even so, I’d rather push it than drive that piece-of-shit Ford.
Sure, if one, two or all three of Motor City’s titans collapse, a lot of people will be going ass-first into the blades. But they’ll have plenty of company. My own line of work, journalism, is shedding workers like a dead dog sheds fleas, and for the same reason — the folks running the show have been too busy cashing checks to come to terms with a changing world. I don’t see anyone trying to money-whip us back to solvency.
Mad Blog Media 
It is easy to critisize the bonehead move of useing private jets as basic transport (hell, my corp has atleast one for the execs, while making us fly coach). But lets not forget a few important facts:
1) Detroit built SUV’ because that’s what people wanted. That’s not a bad business decision. Toyo, Niss, and Honda all STARTED building big SUV’s And P.U. when the saw their market share dropping.
2) American car quality was in the crpper for a long time, however, Ford at least, is on par with Honda and Toyo, according to a recent survey.
3) We aren’t talking about just the “Detroit 3” here, we are talking about all there suppiers, and their suppliers and so on down to my little papermill, which makes Paper for cardboard boxes.
4) not if but when we get into the next big “shooting war”, who’s going to build the tanks, jeeps, trucks, and other stuff. Are we going to buy trucks from Toyota? What if they don’t want to sell? With China and Russia starting to feel “froggy”.
I don’t really like the idea of the govnt bailing out the car makers, but it sure feels a lot better than giving the to banks and watching them sit on the funds, and Detroit auto makers porvide alot more jobs the AIG. (and the’ve recieved over 100B, 4 times what Detroit is asking for.)
Just some thoughts.
Like you, Patrick, we are driving a pair of Subaru products. Both variations on the Impreza. The AWD sucks down a little bit more gas than a FWD car, but trying to climb an 8% grade on packed snow can be a little dicey, especially for my Honolulu-raised bride. I do have an old ’93 Exploder sitting across the street at my neighbor’s house, but its getting less and less use lately. Will be looking for someone who can only afford a jalopy. Well, that could be me in six months at the rate the economy is power-diving for the deck.
I too have no sympathy for the bigshots in Detroit. The corporate jets were the last straw. These guys deserve to be wearing signboards and begging for pennies. Its everyone else connected with the auto industry I feel sympathy for–the folks who were down in the boiler rooms when the captains were getting drunk behind the wheel and finding the shoals.
Detroit management abandoned ship on running smart, sustainable companies a long time ago, as my old man used to rail as a GM machinist–although he still is absolutely loyal to GM iron. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around. Many Murrcans also abandoned ship on sustainable economics a long time ago, which is why Motor City could sell so many gasahogs. On the other hand, the keen minds at Toyota knew how to hedge their bets, building both Tundras and Corollas.
I don’t see a light at the end of this tunnel except for the onrushing locomotive. Not sure how we can bail out the domestic industry.. Even if we socialize the health care costs as in Japan, we are still stuck with the same geniuses that gave away the industry to Nippon while they slept. Time to get rid of this bunch of hares before even more turtles pass us by as we sleep. Perhaps a bankruptcy would be good–followed by firing the lot of the CEOs and their Boards, and putting some folks in place who, with government or private help, rebuilds Detroit in a successful manner.
Then again, maybe we all should be riding bikes and let the car companies go the way of the manual typewriter and slide rule. On the other hand, these might be making a comeback….
I have read and heard many diatribes against the unions for their hand in this, but I have to say that I never saw or heard of any line workers deciding what kinds of vehicles to build, or designing any of those vehicles, or sourcing components, etc. All that was management, and mostly upper management, who also saw their compensation go up at precipitous rates, actually at a much higher rate than line workers. You know what else went up faster than line workers’ wages? Car prices.
The anti-union diatribes are the fictional constructs of the right wing and of sour-grapes folks who are not lucky enough to have a labor union fighting for their rights. As Opus says, Detroit was top-down. I don’t recall my old man ever coming home and telling us excitedly that Management cared about his opinions, or whether the machines he was using needed replacement or upgrades.
We drive a 2001 Subaru Outback or a 1994 Toyota 4wd truck-when we aren’t walking or bicycling. I’m on my 3rd Subaru. I drove a 1991 Legacy for 8 years with no problems. I sold it last at 165k year when I bought the ’01. (The previous 1991 Legacy ran well for 175+k too.)
I’d rather go without a car than have one from the “big three.”