The Big Three Automakers want $25 Billion. Why, with that kind of money, we could have two more months in Iraq. There are legitimate questions about whether it would be wise to direct the nation’s resources toward our manufacturing industries. However, one of them is not the executives’ mode of transportation while going to D.C.
I’ve heard about auto industry representatives arriving in D.C. via private jets 4 or 5 times in the last 12 hours or so — most of which time I was asleep, incidentally. As if this whole thing would have been averted had they flown coach. It’s like blaming the President for the financial crisis by focusing on his use of Air Force One instead of looking at his fetish for deregulation. We can be deeply stupid sometimes. But, to some extent, it’s understandable. When a problem is so big and so complex we can’t readily wrap our mind around it, the tendency is to direct our attention to something simple; even if it’s irrelevant. There’s a principle, the name of which I can’t remember, describing the tendency in corporate meetings for there to be limited discussion of complicated aspects of a project, only to have fierce battles over something stupid, like the color of the packaging.
We should be figuring out the fastest way to get average Americans working, producing, and profiting from their labor. When that happens, they have money to spend on the products of other Americans. Simple!
Have a hard time feeling great sympathy for the “Big Three” or for the UAW members. While other vehicle manufacturers were producing vehicles consumers would buy (at prices they were willing and able to pay) the Big Three continued too many uneconomical lines. The UAW members continued to demand more and it was given to point with the investment of a lunch pail the workers were making more than teachers, college professors, police, firefighters, and a lot of other professions. The UAW members often bragged about how little they actually worked between paid time off and shop rules. I have always owned one of the Big Three vehicles but the next ones will very likely go another direction. It is real hard to defend a business that the free enterprise system will not support—at my age I remember a large number of businesses and whole industries that simply no longer exist. Don’t quite remember the old buggy whip example often used but do remember many auto companies, downtown businesses, etc. etc…
Damnit, Ja just said everything I was going to say.
NPR had an interview with a man this morning who made over $100, 000 a year as a carpenter. I’m not saying that I want him to lose his pension, but I doubt my local carpenter does, and if I ever draw a check that large I’ll probably faint.
Copious reports of commercial verses private travel arrangements are reflective of the frustration everyone is experiencing with these ~captains of industry~. They must arrive as swiftly as their jets will deliver them; they must convince everyone of the wisdom of ignoring the important in order to attend to the urgent!
On the same note – what about the CEO’s of the banks? Haven’t seen any scrutiny or attention to their lavish salaries, benefits, spending, predatory lending practices or private jets. They got their money – no questions asked – under the guise that without it “the economy would collapse”. People are so gullible.
Interesting article we in the UK are in a similar position, all this talk about bailing out banks and stopping the recession is all well and good but get the funds into the workers then they can spend.As per normal its the less well off who seem to suffer the hardest.