The rest of the country is very ignorant of how important the automotive industry is to the very base of every other business in the USA. For every 1 job at an actual auto company, there are 6 jobs that support that job – from secondary vendors to waitresses to construction workers. No industry has invested more in the USA than the auto industry. None.
Silly Valley (aka Silicon Valley), can thank the advances in industrial robots that occurred in the 1970s for much of the basic research that has enabled portable computing and networking. Oh yes, as bizarre as it sounds, both Ford and GM have what are known as SciLabs that do some of the most cutting edge research anywhere. Much of that has been incorporated in other industries – from pharmaceuticals to computers to manufacturing. Lasers? Much of the most advanced work was to do tooling and die in the auto plants!
It is very easy for the rest of America to blame the auto industry for pollution, high prices, etc. without wondering why this is – or even the American public’s culpability in this. For every safety feature demanded, you get to lose fuel efficiency and affordability. Yep, you can’t have both in the environment that has been created by the regulations and laws imposed upon the auto industry.
Despite all the belly aching of the American public, they still buy foreign cars. They have bought foreign cars until there are, in reality, no American-made cars. There are American assembled cars. But, the parts are made from all over the world – some in the USA, most elsewhere.
What about the unwillingness of Americans to pay for health care as a society? The automotive companies pay for more people’s health care than any group other than Medicare (government). Yet, you expect they should be able to sell at the same price as the Japanese and Germans who have no need to cover this for the vast majority of their employees? This is the single biggest expense the auto companies have! Prices would be reduced on most of their product if this expense was not there.
I am highly annoyed with Congress and the American public. They are balking at helping GM in acquiring the dying Chrysler Automotive Group. Chrysler is not going to survive without a real auto manager taking over. Cerberus Group showed complete incompetence in their first 6 months when they endangered the supply line for all 3 manufacturers (and some domestic Japanese manufacturing) by withholding from a major Tier 1 supplier without warning the others they were going to do that. To cut costs, the supply line in manufacturing is razor thin. The auto company execs, unlike Wall Street execs, are not outrageously paid. (They don’t have that kind of money!)
The auto industry, unlike the banking industry, has a history of actually paying back loans from the government. Wow!
By the way, the only parts of GM and Ford that are in trouble are the North American companies. The international divisions – which are kept separate – are in very good health and are actually hiring in some sectors. So, the only parts that are hurting are the ones in the strangle hold of ridiculous levels of obligation and regulation. There are always scuttlings of how Ford or GM is going under. Maybe the North American divisions, but there will be a Ford and a GM, but it may no longer be anywhere in the USA. Hell, it would behoove them to move to Windsor, Ontario, Canada with the way the US government and people have been treating them since Reagan!
By destroying the auto industry through systemic bad regulation and an ever-increasingly onerous health care burden, you have destroyed the manufacturing base that is what makes real wealth in a country.
Real wealth is not from interest compounding on the backs of those who create real goods and services. Real wealth comes from making things people need and want.
Are the auto companies perfect? Hell no! But, they are a damn sight more moral than any banker will ever be.
I have worked in banking, telecommunications, automotive, IT, academia, government, and retail. Each have strengths and weaknesses. The smartest people are in telecommunications and IT, with telecommunications edging that out because, well, if you can play with at telephony switch, that beats a simple server. The most conniving, in banking. (Conniving isn’t necessarily evil.) The most imaginative in academia – though, there was rarely any bearing on reality. The most patient were in retail. The most resourceful and practical? Automotive.
If I had something I needed done in no time whatsoever and someone told me it was impossible? I would call anyone who had run an automotive plant or had to get anything done in automotive. Would it be perfect? No. But, the amazing thing is that these folks don’t just walk away. They will continue to fix the problems.
I have traveled over most of the USA. The auto worker of the American Great Lakes Region and Midwest is the real salt of the earth. This is the person who takes off the first day of deer season. This is the guy who helps his neighbor who is now out of work. They may call one another all kinds of names – even swearing at one another – but they leave it back on the plant floor at the end of the day.
Perhaps it is the very saltiness of the auto worker that alienates so much of the East and West Coast. This saltiness filters all the way through to the Congress Critters we send from Michigan. Even our top executives are not all that refined. They come through the ranks – every successful one, at least.
As much as you may detest the auto industry, it is only a reflection of your dislike of what America is. America is made up of the auto worker and his compatriots more than it is made up of any other group – more than banker stereotype (I am not including day-to-day workers like tellers as “bankers”); more than entertainment stereotype; more than the Silicon Valley stereotype; more than the Washington, D.C. stereotype; because, the majority of people in any industry are just like the guy on the line. Just trying to make it to the end of the day. And, unlike the other industries, the auto companies are trying to keep their promises to their older workers – even if they did eat their young.
One last thing, Michigan, the home of the auto industry, was a leader in environmentalism throughout the 1960s and 1970s. We still have a majority of family farms because of some of these initiatives, does your state?
