Early February, 2006 -- Last November, the top floor at Ford in a speech called for government backing for the industry, which obviously of late seems to be in a bit of a financial pickle.  (At the end of Jan06 some pundits were debating a merger of Ford and Chevvy.  That is like a merger of Protestantism and Catholicism.  It may be an old testament abomination to Yaweh, for all I know.) Should government do that sort of thing?  I mean subsidize big American companies which are going broke, assuming the reason is poor management decisions and not something for which management has no defense, like another country subsidizing the same industry there, and dumping the product on the American market at an artificially low price. 

Well, government already does that sort of thing, and with the exception of one area, shouldn't.  You can block the import of artifically low priced products, or put a tariff (import tax) on each item that artifically jacks up the price, making American stuff price competitive. But, unless the reason is good for doing it, it is a terrible idea and in practice produces terrible results. 

We'll begin with the area where government should do it.  The military.  Ever since the English introduced to their battlefields the longbow and horses bred to have big feet, the better to squash revolting serfs with, technology and hardware have been critical to victory in war.  As a matter of fact, the first Chinese warlord to whip all the other Chinese warlords, creating the first conglomerated China, did so with six inch longer bronze swords.  Longer was better then, for sure.  Technology is critical to war, and working weapons factories damned important, too.  If you allow companies which make war things to go broke between wars, you have to begin them all over from scratch the next time the military has to squash somebody.  Best to keep current, and currently active  on those items in a dangerous world.

Subsidies produce subordinate slop

That exception noted, and mentioning the need to defend against foreign government subsidies to their companies which dump low cost products on our market,  the rest of the time it is a bad idea.  Subsidizing the survival of businesses often promotes lazy companies, overindulgent unions and junk production levels and quality.  The help once given to Chrysler falls into the category of miraculous luck.  Mostly what happens is that when you subsidize failure you get more failure.  It's like fertilizing weeds. Anyway, the current crises has its roots in the Carter era. The American cars of the Seventies were in some cases great sleds that fell apart as you drove them, sucked down gas like great wheeled group porta-potties and finished turning a corner fifteen minutes after the front wheels had already found a parking place. 

(I will defend the muscle cars, for they served their purpose with snarling grace and terrifying style.  Wonderful petroleum guzzlers with blue smoke rising from their spinning racing slicks, the ground rockets of that era deserve the worship they experience, today..  For the other massive, poorly constructed family tanks, I have no pity.) 

And, let's get another typical liberal lie out of the way, here.  The left is forever talking about all the jobs gone overseas.  In the first place, Democrat taxation, regulation and energy prices drove them out of the country, and in the second place, you can talk to us about exporting jobs right after you talk to us about importing jobs.  A great many of the Japanese autos which are kicking American auto butts are built in America by Americans in factories constructed by Japanese investment and management.  You don't get present unemployment numbers (in the 5% range), plus years of home sales records from an economy constructed of people fighting to get a few minimum wage hamburger flipper jobs. This present economy is a beaut, no matter what the gigantic, old, media buzzards say.

That said, off we go.

General Motors, which once was so powerful that it became an economic maxim. (As goes General Motors, so goes the nation) The company now controls about a quarter of U.S. auto sales. It was the Seventies, and Japanese quality  that began the beginning of what now seems to have reached the beginning of the end.  The reason for the decline in GM market share was the same one that cost the Democrats both houses of congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and the White House -- a decline in values.

You give money to whom?

Like Rome, the company grew fat and prideful, and lost its fighting edge.  Barbarians from the Far East (the Far West to those of us on the Left Coast) built autos which lasted twice as long and had half the mechanical problems, and snatched the empire from under Detroit's fat royal feet.  Add to this the financial support the big automakers have for decades given to leftwing causes, like PBS, and leftwing politicians (Michigan loves liberals), and these bigcarshots have financed their own destruction.  The Ford Foundation, alone, has supported more idiotic leftist entities than Joseph Stalin.

So, now, we hear the cries of the auto industry, which has been taxed to death by the politicians they funded, and benefitted to death by the unions these same politicians protected, and we are reminded of the carpenter who smashed his own thumb and sued the maker of the hammer.

Considering the damage to the fundamental structures of America these people have done, I, a lifelong Democrat and Ford man (I will accept a gift of a '57 Chev hardtop, however), have little sympathy for them.  If they are so ignorant that they fail to grasp the reason for taking jobs offshore -- the personal and corporate taxes fostered by the politicians they funded, both varieties of which must come from (where else?) the sales revenues of  companies -- well, I say adieu to the Boys of the American Road.  We'll write a book about the decline and fall of the American auto empire.  Maybe some young engineers and entrepeneurs will read it and join the conservative movement in America, hoping to use political power to erase the effects of liberalism and give rebirth to the conditions that once made America the greatest manufacturing nation on the planet.

What's to be done?

The gun metaphor which applies to the fading Motor Kings of JohnDingleland is, "They shot themselves in their own foot."

Cut the crap, Detroit.  When the corporations join the legions of leeches on the public dole, the circle will be complete, and the whole nation will begin to revolve it's way to becoming a socialist debacle like France, which is so desperate for money that it kissed the rear ends of dictators like Hussein to get scraps from scams like the U.N. Oil for Food ripoff.

You don't need a dime of government money, Detroit.  Get out of your overstuffed chair, dump your overburden of bureaucracy, start supporting capitalist politicians instead of socialists, tell your foundations to cut the liberals (PARTICULARLY PBS) off at the pockts, hit the ground with both fists ready and give the foreign competition one for the Gipper.

But, you say, some of you might not survive?  Ask one of those liberals your foundations feed to explain the methodology of Darwinism. 

(LL)

© 2006 Oregon Magazine