Emanuel Urges Aid for Auto Industry, New York Times, November 9, 2008.
Give me a break! The people running the US auto companies couldn’t see the writing on the wall, 5, 10, 20 years ago? The super-sized SUVs they have been pushing on the American public were doomed, but they kept churning them out, as long as they could sell one more.
Six years ago I realized given the trend of fuel prices, I needed to get the most fuel efficient vehicle available while I had some money to do so. Within a year my sister, who changed jobs and had a longer commute, and mother were early Prius adopters. You’d think that the CEO’s of GM, Ford and Chrysler would have more insight into auto trends than my family!
Either the people in charge of US auto companies are idiots who could not anticipate, or refused to plan for, easily discernible future events, or they were banking on a government bail-out all along. In either case, they have proven themselves irresponsible and unworthy of an injection of taxpayer money to bring them into the 21st century, which is now, (Hello!!) almost 8 years old.
Why not hold the auto industry accountable for its poor decisions? Let the failures fail and let smarter, more responsive companies come in to fill the market. In the past, that is how the U.S. economy grew and why the U.S. produced some of the world’s most amazing innovations, not by government supporting weak companies.
I am sorry auto workers may lose their current jobs. I agree with Michael Moore’s assertion that the workers would have made smarter choices if they had decision-making power, but if we let the market work as it was intended, successful companies will create jobs to offset those lost at companies who fail. In a functioning free market, the people with the most responsibility, those at the top, would lose the most, while those on the production floor would move on to other jobs.
