The auto business

I am hopelessly confused (either again or as usual, I’m not sure). It’s this auto business that I simply do not understand, and I’m not certain it even is understandable. I saw today an article in which a UCLA economist has suggested that GM’s problems could be served by letting them be taken over by Toyota. His primary argument seems to be that as Toyota is a successful company, they should be able to take over GM, incorporate it, and thereby solve the problem of GM’s pending insolvency. This would be accomplished by the private sector without the U.S. government being involved. Whether this is a good idea or not I do not know. But it raises questions for me that simply exacerbate my feelings of ignorance about such matters. I have always wondered, for example, how it is that Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, all Japanese companies, could operate plants in the U.S. making a profit while our own auto companies were busily outsourcing and complaining about things. Some have suggested that this is simply because the Japanese make better cars. Others have said that it is because the Japanese companies are not unionized and thus do not have the same expenses for retirement, health care, and whatever. Leaving aside the question of who makes the better cars for the moment, why are Japanese companies operating in the United States, and hiring U.S. workers, allowed to operate by apparently different rules in the first place? Is it merely an accident of history that they are not unionized?

More importantly, to me anyway, is the question of a domestic auto industry. One of the arguments for bailing out our homegrown auto industry is that it is important to have a domestic industry. Toyota, et al, although they operate on U.S. soil and hire U.S. workers are not considered domestic. So what argument is there for having a domestic auto industry? Is it because if we were attacked by some unknown enemy we could not depend upon Toyota or Subaru to manufacture for the national defense? If this is so, why do we allow them here? As this seems to me to be kind of far-fetched, perhaps we just need a domestic auto industry for national pride, and to insure employment for so many of our citizens. But going by what is happening, national pride would not seem to be much of a consideration. And jobs could be provided just as well by these interlopers, if we could depend on them. But that is the basic question, could we depend on them if they are foreign owned and operate seemingly under different rules?

Anyway, if the Japanese companies are doing so well, and if our own auto companies are not, are, indeed dinosaurs as some claim, why should we bail them out instead of letting them just fail along with the dinosaurs? If it is true that we need a domestic auto industry whey should we not nationalize it and protect it from unfair competition? This is not a case of auto manufacturers building cars overseas with cheap labor, they are building them right here with the same labor the domestics use, but apparently without having to pay as much because of the non-unionization. In other words, I guess this means that unions are bad things and that workers should not be able to organize for their best interests. This seems to me very anti-American, but if it is acceptable I should think Republicans would be all for it, they’re constantly harping about the evils of unions.

One other question that comes to mind is what about the overseas businesses of Ford, GM, and Chrysler? Do they operate at similar disadvantages there? And if so, why? It’s not as though they are purely “domestic” themselves. They are every bit as international as are Toyota and the other Japanese companies so why should they play by different rules? If Toyota, whose sales are slumping along with GM’s, are not asking for a bailout, why should GM. If they were asking for a bailout who would they be asking? The Japanese? But why would the Japanese want to bail out a company employing U.S. workers? If things got really bad for them why wouldn’t they just withdraw to Japan?

See, I told you I was hopelessly confused. My instincts tell me we should not bail anyone out. My national pride tells me we need our own auto industry. My humanitarian urges insist we cannot let millions more go unemployed. My sense of fair play insists we should make all the auto companies play by the same rules. My sense of outrage tell me we have been betrayed by our own government and the corporations, acting in tandem, for a long time. We desperately need some dramatic changes, probably more dramatic than Obama will provide, but at the moment, he’s the only game in town.

LKBIQ:

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen

TILT:
Alan Dundes, a folklorist at the University of California, Berkley, received death threats for an article he wrote about homoerotic aspects of American football.