Bailing out the auto industry, without making significant changes to how they do business and what they produce, is not in the best long term interest of America or the environment. Bankruptcy may “not be an option” for automakers but it may very well be the best thing that could happen for consumers.
We are facing difficult economic times and America needs to change its attitude concerning what is really necessary to maintain healthy, satisfied lives. Our excesses have finally caught up with us and we must learn to now become more frugal. We have adopted a destructive throw-away mentality in this country that has to be reversed. The automotive industry is no exception.
There are far too many cars on the market. A Long Beach California port is warehousing thousands of new cars due to lack of buyers. Detroit has housed thousands of unwanted American-made cars over the last two years at Michigan’s state fairground and in lots at its airports. Car lots across the country remain crowded with unsold new cars. We need to make our cars last longer. We will survive without a new car every year or even every three years. Automakers do not need to make new model changes every year.
What is wrong with driving a used car a little longer? The Big 3 likes to tell us that the after-market parts industry will suffer without new cars every year, this is simply a scare tactic. As their cars age, car owners will need to replace parts and this will keep the after-market parts industry alive. Automakers need to concern themselves with making a product that produces less pollution, gets better fuel economy and lasts longer than just a couple of years. All of this can be done by combining current and developing technologies.
Wages in the auto industry are out of whack with the rest of the nations work force. They need to be brought in-line with everyone else.
Automaker CEO’s will actually survive without their exorbitant multi-million dollar a year salaries and private jets. My advice to them is to get your heads out of the clouds and live amongst the consumers you claim to care so much about. Take this time and the money already given to you to build the new breed of cars that the environment needs and Americans truly want.
Flying private jets to Washington to ask for financial help and then defending the practice as ‘standard procedure’ shows that their ‘standard procedure’ leans towards excess that a financially troubled corporation should not be indulging in. Are they more concerned with hanging on to their exalted perch so they can continue to loot their respective corporations than they are in keeping millions of Americans employed? Extremely high executive salaries and membership in exclusive country clubs, use of private jets, and various other miscellaneous fluff that typically goes with being the figurehead of a large American corporation does not help the average American auto worker put food on their table.
Auto executives say they are going to streamline business operations, keeping in mind that their idea of streamlined business operations in the past was to layoff thousands of workers and move their operations overseas, I can’t help but think they are a bit disingenuous in trying to convince us that asking for our help is going to benefit us.
This request for help, from an industry that affects so many aspects of American life, comes at a pivotal point in our economic and environmental health. The concerns of both must be taken into account, for they can both benefit if we proceed responsibly.
Should we bail them out of a situation of their own making? The painful lesson of British Leyland must be heeded in the limited effectiveness of bailouts. The government got in the business of trying to make a winner out of a structurally flawed company. Is the U.S. auto industry structurally flawed? They have already proven they are willing to deprive U.S. auto workers of jobs by sending those jobs outside the U.S. Flint Michigan, and ultimately the entire state, has been devastated due to auto executives decisions to hire cheaper labor in Mexico. And GM is currently building a $300 million facility to build cars in Russia.
And when Americans began turning away from American made cars in favor of foreign made cars that got better gas mileage, the U.S. auto makers, instead of listening to the trend and retooling their industry to make what Americans obviously wanted, their answer was to increase the production of gas guzzling behemoths to help keep the price of their product down. By ignoring consumers U.S. auto makers took a path that led to an oversaturated market of ever larger vehicles that increased our dependence on fossil fuel which in turn increased pollution. Environmentalist have been demanding for decades to have access to vehicles that addressed these two major concerns. Auto executives chose to ignore these demands and that decision put them in their current situation.
I don’t think they can be trusted to put America’s best interest first. Their current business model of bleeding the industry dry to pad their executives’ lifestyle and let their employees fend for themselves needs to end. They need to listen to their consumers to produce a safer and more fuel efficient product and prove they are willing to put America first by keeping jobs here in America.
Bailing them out is not going to force changes that need to take place. Perhaps the humbling experience of a bankruptcy is exactly what is called for.
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