I Love What You Do For Me, Toyota!
It's always nice to have one's beliefs confirmed. I was traveling this week, and wasn't able to follow current events closely, but as the bad news around Toyota continued to mount, I figured that someone at NRO would be flacking for the Japanese and suggesting that it was all part of a government plot to help GM. Sure enough, when I came home, I discovered that John Miller was suggesting that the federal government, with its ownership stake in GM, wants Toyota to "drop dead," citing as evidence Secretary of Transportation LaHood's comment that "if anybody owns any of those vehicles, stop driving it, and take it to a Toyota dealer." I should have figured the Japanese apologist would be Miller, who started acting as a cheerleader for the Japanese several years ago, a fact I noted here. This is also perfectly consistent with Miller's character, which first revealed itself when he said one of his goals was to drive Sam Francis out of polite society.
Miller, you see, though now a comfortable denizen of the Beltway, hails from the Detroit area, and those who flack for the Japanese in Detroit are made of the same stuff as was Benedict Arnold, since they know how badly hurt Detroit has been by the rise of the Japanese auto industry and how devastated Detroit would be if the American auto industry ever collapsed. As even the Wall Street Journal has noted, for every job the Japanese auto industry has created here, the American auto industry has lost a little over six jobs, 2.8 of them in Michigan. But even the traitors of the founding generation were better than their spiritual descendants today. Miller regularly writes at NRO about his undying loyalty to whatever Detroit sports team happens to be doing well at the moment, affecting a sham loyalty to Detroit; Arnold, in his exile in England, at least had the decency not to fill the English newspapers with declarations of his undying love for New England village greens or the like.
As for the substance, I see nothing wrong with American government officials trying to assist American companies in beating their foreign competition. Most of the nations that compete with us think that way, and Americans used to think that way, too. But such thinking has virtually disappeared in Washington since the Reagan administration, and Transportation Secretary LaHood was soon apologizing and burbling about what a "good corporate citizen" Toyota is. As well he might: If recent history is any guide, LaHood stands a good chance of continuing to make money in Washington after he leaves the Transportation Department by lobbying on behalf of foreign interests, as so many other departing government officials have done in the past few decades.
Entries(RSS)
Mr. Miller's kind of "conservative" disloyalty is what passes for wisdom among Big Business afficionados. Miller's magazine, as far as I know, staunchly believes in the absurd idea of corporations as persons--an idea that has had a distortive effect on our entire political economy. Long gone are the days when NR excoriated "Big Business."
Any creature who would shill for foreigners who would destroy his own home town and eliminate it's way of life and means of living, is subhuman.....it must have it's lair in Foggy Bottom. Along with all the other swamp creatures with their trade and immigration policies.
Well done, Mr. Piatak. Someone has to call out our faux conservatives.
"LaHood stands a good chance of continuing to make money in Washington after he leaves the Transportation Department by lobbying on behalf of foreign interests, as so many other departing government officials have done in the past few decades."
Mr. Piatak,
As you know this is precisely why Pat Buchanan created such a stir in D.C.and the Republican party, after his win in New Hampshire. He could see the "storm clouds gathering" so in the interest of full disclosure, he assured his party and followers what his candidacy meant to them: "As soon as I take the oath of office, your new world comes crashing down!" They took him at his word, ponied up as much money and calumny as it would take to unsaddle him, and Mr Forbes purchased the election in Arizona as Pat toured the OK Corral. It was a poetic end to the last ralley of ordinary citizens against citizens of the world or what we now call,"“good corporate citizens." T'is all in pieces now."
Robert,
Yes, you are right.
I would imagine that Mr. Miller is the sort of guy who, when asked to comment on the Mexican soccer fans who spat on the American players in a USA-Mexico match in Los Angeles a few years back and booed the "Star Spangled Banner", would comment, "That's the free market at work, praise be to the free market."
Derek,
You are correct when you say,"I would imagine that Mr. Miller is the sort of guy who .... when Mexican soccer fans spat on American players.... or booed the “Star Spangled Banner”.... excepted it all as the free market at work in the arena..."
But really all that needs to be said these days is "the sort of guy who writes for National Review."
The other side is 'they' are happy to send corp Toyota dollars to local American merchants for these repairs. It's a scam either way, though I agree with #2.
Isn't "traitor" a little strong? In case you're wondering, I don't have any ties to foreign companies, auto or otherwise.
But as I've detailed in some other responses here, the U.S. auto industry's problems are mostly home grown, from a repressive government that taxes and regulates American businesses and citizens to death and devalues our currency, from pro-abortion unions, and from dumb management. To cite just one example: Why in the name of Walter P. Chrysler are we still spending billions "defending" South Korea when their auto industry is stronger than ours?
Again, here's how to help our auto industry _without_ protectionism:
1. Return to the gold standard so wild swings in the oil prices we've suffered since 1971 don't whipsaw the auto industry every few years.
2. End the foreign wars; vast parts of our industrial capacity make and design tanks and F-16s instead of cars and civilian trucks. (See Mehlman's work on how the Vietnam War devoted two-thirds of our tool industry to war instead of civilian production.)
3. Cut high American business taxes to global levels.
4. Bring back the high personal deduction of about $10,000 so the working class pays 1960s-level low taxes, and can afford cars.
5. End the capital gains tax -- a double tax (on top of income taxes already paid), which kills more production than it takes in from taxpayers.
6. End the global warming jihad that's destroying our industries while the Koreans, Chinese, Indians, etc., laugh at us.
Or, at least, try all those things before trying protectionism. Because, who wants to give those tax-and-power-gorged parasites in Washington even more control over us?
Mr. Seiler,
No, traitor is not too strong. This is not a post about economic theory or protectionism or the history of the American auto industry or anything so abstract. It's a post about loyalty. Anyone with ties to Detroit knows what the American auto industry has meant to that city, knows what its decline has meant, and knows what its final demise would mean. Anyone with those ties, and that knowledge, who uses his media position, as Miller has, to attack the American auto industry and extol the virtues of the Japanese auto industry, is a traitor, if that word has any meaning.
I have noticed, though, that, generally speaking, libertarians have a hard time understanding what the word traitor means, because, generally speaking, they have no loyalty to anything except their abstract economic theories. There are exceptions, of course, but that is the conclusion I have come to after reading libertarians and their arguments for well over two decades.
Thank you, Mr. Piatak. As a native Michigander, who does not consider himself a statist or a libertine globalist, you have my gratitude for standing up for my homeland.
It is impossible to fathom the loss of the standard of living in the rust-belt, more so that it was in the "peaceful" era of "Pax-Americana" in the last 30 years.
I say if any region should scream for secession it should be mine. From what I can gather the Southerners and West-Coasters are doing fine dealing with foreign corporate overlords.
@10, Mr. Piatak. Well, as I may have written before, I'm a native Detroiter. After serving in the U.S. Army for 4 years, I got out in 1982 and went home to 16% unemployment. I couldn't get a job. So I left.
When I look at problems, I look at the most obvious cause of those problems. For Detroit, it obviously is the federal government. Urban "renewal" and the construction of "freeways" in Detroit destroyed 22% of the housing stock, mainly in the black neighborhoods. The blacks moved into the white neighborhoods; then whites and middle-class blacks left Detroit. Can't blame that on Japan. And you can't blame the Koreans or the Krauts for the 6 disastrous policies I outlined above.
No way I will EVER want to increase the power of the central regime at Washington. They're already turning GM and Chrysler into "green" companies whose cars no one will buy. The Obama regime is filled with car-haters who want everybody to crowd into mass transit.
But how about this. Let's first enact my 6-point reform program. If that doesn't turn America's car industry into the most productive and innovative in the world, I'll back any protectionist idea you come up with. This being Super Bowl weekend, like Joe Namath, "I'll guarantee you."
I hated my last Nip car. Everything that you push or pull on broke including the doggone dipstick. Probably because they're made for 5'3", 120-lb guys. After that experience, I bought an American auto that wasn't made for a dwarf.
Mr. Seiler,
I agree with most of your proposals. And I appreciate your desire to see a revived American auto industry. But we wouldn't need to use protectionism or any other policy change to revive the American auto industry if we could change the buying habits of those Americans who buy foreign cars. If every street in America had the car makeup of the one on which I live, instead of the car makeup I see when I visit Washington, DC or California, the American auto industry would be in terrific shape and GM, Ford, and Chrysler would be reopening plants they have shuttered all over the country, both inside and outside of the industrial Midwest. Kicking Toyota when it's down, as John Miller feared the Secretary of Transportation was doing, is an excellent way of doing that. Let's hope that Toyota is becoming the butt of jokes all over the country.
Jon I:
You are more than welcome. And I agree with you: the industrial Midwest has become the part of the country too much of the rest of the nation feels justified in holding in contempt. I also have some understanding of Michigan. I am a native Clevelander and still live here, but my parents have lived in Michigan since 1984 and my sister and her family have lived there since the early 1990s.
@ Robert (#7) LOL.
@Mr. Seiler (#9) Like Mr. Piatak, I also agree with most of your proposals. But this is also about loyalty, as well, in the same sense as the debate thread in Mr. Storck's pieces about Austrian economic theory is about papal authority, not about "praexology" and wage theory.
Over the summer in my town, I did not buy a vegetable or fruit that did not come out of the ground here. I purchased all perishable foods except meats at our local farmer's market, conveniently located across the street from where I work.
I did not shop for these things in a grocery store until about December. Then, I started shopping at Wal Mart. Why? Although I believe Wal Mart is the apotheosis of everything that is wrong with America, all the major grocers are faceless chains. Wal Mart's prices are lowest among the other major faceless chains.
Now, this farmer's market is free of all the problems you cited that plague the auto industry. Yet its prices are still higher than groceries, which import their produce.
I shop there out of loyalty to the farmers in this county. That's what Mr. Piatak is talking about.
If I were to follow libertarian theory -- which rejects that kind of loyalty and says the lowest price is always the best -- I would never use the farmer's market because it is much more expensive than the grocery store.
I buy, or try to buy American, to the degree I can. That goes especially for cars.
Mr. Piatak is right. Buying habits have to change.
"If I were to follow libertarian theory — which rejects that kind of loyalty and says the lowest price is always the best — I would never use the farmer’s market because it is much more expensive than the grocery store."
Libertarian theory says that the customer is king. You are making a choice that you prefer the quality over the price. Others will prefer the lower price at a somewhat lower quality. Isnt the free market in action wonderful?
One other way to look at this Mr Piatak is that many of the Toyotas being sold here were built here, by American hands, and this hurts them too. For the record though, I drive an American car - 235,000 miles and still going strong.
Mr. Maxwell,
I am delighted that you drive an American car that is still going strong at 235,000 miles. A friend of mine is still driving my '95 Chevrolet, which has about the same number of miles yours does.
Yes, Toyota employs some Americans. It also ships hundreds of thousands of vehicles to America each year from Japan (where it is run, repatriates its profits, and does the vast bulk of its high end engineering and research work). If Toyota's sales decline and it needs to lay people off, it can choose to lay off Japanese employees rather than American employees. Any skepticism you have that this is the choice Toyota would make in that scenario merely underscores my point that there still is a distinction between American auto companies and Japanese auto companies, despite the claims made by Japanese apologists like Miller.
#12, I concur with Mr. Sailer. Toyota simply makes a better car at a better price and that is why we buy them. All other considerations are neither here nor there, We can debate such pros and cons ad nauseam. The Obama IS attacking Toyota to benefit GM. But it will all backfire as it should and GM will end up bankrupt as it should. However Mr. Miller, whoever he is, could not shine the shoes of the great late Sam Francis. In addition, his obseravtions about Japanese culture are completely upside down.
Here in the South, the local car manufacturers are foreign. Perhaps our loyalty should be to them. Don't we have to be more concerned with our neighbors' jobs than with the Midwest--especially now that the car manufacturers there are subsidiaries of the central government?
My present car is a 2004 Pontiac Vibe. This was produced in a joint GM-Toyota plant in California. It is basically a Toyota Matrix with a Pontiac nose. It is a very nice car and is extremely reliable. Of course, Pontiac is no more, and the plant has been closed. Prior to this, I had a 1986 1/2 Pontiac Fiero GT. I was planning to go back to graduate school, and wanted something to replace my rusting Ford Taurus, and that would last through a Ph.D. program. One of my engineer buddies suggested getting Fiero, and so I bought a used one. I reasoned that it was mostly plastic, so like credit card debt, it would last for many long years. I had it for about 13 years, and it was the best car I ever had. It was a real fright in winter driving conditions, but it was reliable, comfortable, handled great, went like a bat out of Hell, and did not rust. Now, I did have to replace the engine and transmission a year of so after I bought it, but I realized that it had been in the wrong hands when I had the driver's seat reupholstered the first time, and a lost Pearl Jam tape was stuck under the seat. What repairs and maintenance it required were largely necessitated by the basic design of a ground hugging sports car. When I sold it to a local mechanic who put a fuel injected 350 cubic inch V-8 into it, I had almost 230,000 miles on it. If I could buy a new one now, I would do so in a heart beat. But, Pontiac is no more, and they only made Fieros for 4 years. For quite a while it held the record for the largest volume of employee sales for any GM model. When mine was made, Pontiac's motto was, "We build excitement!" When it was in the shop, I rented a much newer Pontiac Grand Am, which would have been more appropriately named "Grand Ma." It was a nice car, but utterly boring. I really miss my old Fiero, almost as much as I miss Sam Francis.
Ronald,
A few years ago the Wall Street Journal quoted an unnamed Toyota executive as saying, “It’s much, much more profitable to produce cars in Japan and ship them all to the U. S. right now, if it wasn’t for the political problems that might cause.” Those plants were built here as a hedge against American protectionism, and if there is no American auto industry to protect anymore, the Japanese would likely begin to move production back to Japan or to lower wage areas like Mexico, where they have also established plants. No region of America benefits if our country becomes economically dependent on foreigners.
Steve,
Yes, the Fiero was a great car.
Mr. Piatak, et al.: I've been thinking all day about this post, and what came to mind is Dr. Clyde Wilson's observation that America had protectionism when the East Coast Elite (ECE; my terminology) owned the factories, and free trade when they shipped the factories overseas. The politics had nothing to do with our trade theories and sentiments, pro and con; just their using the government to manipulate the system. They are the people -- the "traitors," in Mr. Piatak's terminology -- behind the American economy's collapse.
Likewise, my nice 6-point auto industry recovery program (see above) will go nowhere. The ECE favors fiat currency so it can profit from manipulating the system; see the Goldman Sachs nexus with the Bush and Obama regimes, and its subsequent bailout -- Wall Street looting Main Street.
The ECE also loves long wars because, as Country Joe sang in the 1960s, "There's plenty of good money to be made/ Supplying the Army with the tools of the trade." The Bushes are connected to KBR and Cheney was the top ripoff honcho at Halliburton.
They need taxes and deficits to pay for it all, so forget about tax cuts and paying off the debt. And the Global Warming hoax is another money-making venture, with Goldman-Sachs and Al Gore getting even richer trading carbon credits.
I, at least, am getting a laugh with Washington, District of Criminals being covered in a record snow, even as Climategate gets hotter. Our best weapon against the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Gores, the Obamas and the rest of the ECE is laughter.
I'm sure I would like to live in any polity designed by Mr. Piatak, even with protectionism; I despise the current system of centralized tyranny, even with manipulated trade that's called "free trade."
I don't know how much any of us can do. But I long have vowed to do what I can to reduce Washington's immense powers, or at least never to give them any more powers. As Joe Sobran once said: I don't have any foreign enemies. All my enemies are here at home.
Mr. Seiler,
I am flattered that my post has produced so much reflection. I would agree with you that one of our current problems is a leadership class that does not care about the country. This problem is exacerbated by having that class concentrated in Washington DC, a city completely divorced from economic reality, since Washington continues to prosper no matter what is happening in the rest of the country.
Good piece, Tom. Like you, I am worried about the deleterious effects of free trade.
Recently, I have pondered the question whether America's large size and diversity have contributed to our present course.
Christopher Caldwell points out in a recent article,
"Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, the Harvard economists, have shown that roughly half of Americans’ antipathy towards European-style socialism can be accounted for by the ethnic diversity of the United States. This view is given support by the recent work of Robert Putnam, the sociologist, who finds that people living under conditions of diversity “hunker down”. They trust their neighbours less – even neighbours of their own kind. They are less philanthropic, less social and less inclined to pay taxes."
Now, before anyone condemns me for supporting socialism, let me say I'm not advocating socialism. But I do think it's an interesting fact that socialism most often "works" in smaller, homogenous countries.
On the same note, I wonder whether the same can be said for "humane economic policies" (such as those advocated by Willhelm Roepke)?
And can the same be said for free trade? Would a smaller, more homogenous, more patriotic (in the traditional sense of the word) country be as likely to purse such suicidal free trade policies?
There are exceptions to this observation (e.g. New Zealand), but smaller, more homogenous countries most often seem opposed to free trade (e.g. Japan, many European countries, etc.). I cannot help but think that America's current ideological apparatus and changing demographics, coupled with the result that the U.S. is untethered from reality, have led to our present unfortunate situation.
#26. Socialism does not work in any country. Do not trust the counterfit Harvard professors. Markets do not fail, they are self correcting. What fails is the political system. Goldman Sacks knew that when worse came to worst the government would bail them out.Had they not known this this, they would not have done what they did.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has a sensible idea. Products would be taxed on their domestic content, the higher the content, the lower the tax. Otherwise you have a situation where corporations send production to the lowest-wage countries (wage arbitrage). The old American system of protection broke down when the USA wanted to cement the loyalty of our Cold War allies Germany and Japan by opening our markets to their industrial products (another dividend of interventionism). Since then the situation has become progressively worse with more "free trade" deals alienating more American production. Businessmen who wanted to keep production in the USA could be undersold by those who produced overseas. Although Mr. Seiler's ideas are certainly worthy it is unlikely they could overcome the low-wage advantage of China et al.
As Tom Piatak has pointed out previously, why not have tariffs instead of the Federal Income Tax? This resulted in prosperity throughout most of America's history (as well as prosperity in many other Western nations).
This good post by Mr. Piatak has resulted in a very good discussion. I would like to remind all that at its core the problem, like all problems we face, is a cultural one. And Mr. Piatak has focused on one of the most important facets of this cultural problem: loyalty. That loyalty is not merely an issue with car buyers - though it is an issue in that realm as evidenced to me in many irrational conversations I've had with the hip, in-the-know, i-Pod listening, attention-deprived, middle-aged tv news consumers who can't be bothered by actual factual comparisons bewteen domestic and foreign cars because only the foreign ones are really fashionable (Midwestern, or their own uncle's job, be damned). No the problem is pervasive. Consider the disloyalty of the top executives of American firms (including auto firms) who place little value on their employees' jobs (whether blue or white collar). Consider the disloyalty of the lobby-bought legislative bodies who will not do what other free-market countries routinely do: enact border-adjusted tariffs like the last couple of posters suggest. Mr. Seiler finally comes around by post #24 to mentioning what are perhaps the biggest traitors, the east coast banking establishment for whom no amount of "creative destruction" is too much and no amount of bonus cash is too tasteless. Libertarians will be libertarians, which is to say morally deficient materialists just like their socialist brethren. But the average unliterate news consumer in this country is at the mercy of these ideologues who manipulate them into their behaviors. And as long as those behaviors enrich the bankers and the corporate and government elites that they control, then the "free market" news outlets will continue to manipulate the population into behaviors that are fundamentally self-defeating.
"But the average unliterate news consumer in this country is at the mercy of these ideologues who manipulate them into their behaviors. And as long as those behaviors enrich the bankers and the corporate and government elites that they control, then the “free market” news outlets will continue to manipulate the population into behaviors that are fundamentally self-defeating."
This is so true it cannot be repeated enough. Advertising was a great invention for the manipulation of mass-man. This fact is so well understood by its practitioners that they use the word, "Filler" for what most of us would refer to as "the movie" the "episode", the "game" etc. It is the advertising that is the essence of what television is, while the "good" movies, "family entertainment" etc. are considered filler by the manipulators. This is a sociological fact, better utilized in the political arena of television and radio, than in almost any other area.
It's good to point out the disloyalty of writers, intellectuals, corporate execs and politicians. It is a dangerous thing to try to scale those ideas generally to fit the decision that every Joe makes of buying a car.
Detroit, the rustbelt and manufacturing at large in the U.S. has been betrayed by many people but least of all by the U.S. consumer.
Mr. McCabe,
I agree, which is why I wrote about one particular writer whose ties make his views particularly egregious.
My point in mentioning consumer choices was to point out that there is no need to change government policy at all to benefit American manufacturers if consumer thinking could be changed, and that this episode represents an opportunity to change consumer thinking. It can't be good for Toyota that Jon Stewart is now mocking "The Toyotathon of Death." I also think it is fair to suggest that patriotism is one motive for many people who make a habit of buying American cars.
Yes, Mr. Tom Piatak, you were right to bring up what you did and start this debate, even though I don't always agree with you. With the Tea Partiers cheering warmonger Sarah Palin, who would make everything worse, somebody has to start the discussion of restoring American economic greatness.
Some pertinent numbers from a new column by Eric Margolis about where our money is going -- and it sure ain't into engineering better cars. Given the immense waste of our money on military hardware and our shambolic global empire, it's amazing the Detroit Big Three even still exist at all, let alone produce some pretty decent cars.
---------------------
Here's Margolis:
Washington’s deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, which the US already owes $1.5 trillion. The United States has put its fate in the hands of two nations who bear it little good will....
Debt service will cost Washington $250 billion, and may reach over a third of the total Federal budget within the next decade. Washington is still paying for past wars while considering starting a new one against Iran....
Obama’s total proposed annual military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret "black programs" (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan (including bribes); 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veteran’s costs. Add $75 billion (nearly 2.5 times France’s total defense budget) for 16 poorly functioning intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees who keep tripping over one another.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far) will cost $200–250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama’s Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion – more than Germany’s total defense budget.
These figures do not account for wear and tear on US military equipment, costs of reconfiguring the US military to wage colonial wars in the Third World, or the cost of replacing worn-out equipment. Pentagon bookkeeping is about as flexible as Enron’s bookkeeping.
No wonder US defense stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama’s "austerity" budget....
America has become the Sick Man of the Western World, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire whose inept financial management was legendary.
The Pentagon colossus now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America’s rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.
China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of US on defense.
There are 750 US military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea. President George W. Bush doubled military spending – much of which accrues to Republican states – to wage his faux war on terror.
Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. America is on a permanent war footing. Many Americans believe the president’s primary role is as a war leader rather than chief executive of the republic.
Like Bush, President Barack Obama is paying for America’s wars through supplemental authorizations – i.e. putting them on the nation’s already maxed-out credit card. Wage war now – pay later. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.
(Link to full article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis179.html)
Oh, am I enjoying this! The myth of superior Japanese quality is crashing down around their ears: as I write, the news breaks that even Lexus, one of hippest of the hip, coolest of the cool, yuppy trophy cars, is being recalled. I would love to see the looks on the faces of all those who have looked down on me from their lofty Lexi as I barged through in my 13 year old Yank tank, as they open the recall notice.
I remember with special delight the reactions of the university crowd I found myself living with when renting a place in New Haven, as they were ushered into my cavernous 1971 Chrysler New Yorker one night. This is a car for which you actually need an usher to show you to your seat. Passengers on one side of the car need lorgnettes to see those on the other side. It was plain to see from the gingerly way they approached the car that they thought they were doing something that, if it became part of their permanent record, might not allow them to remain viable candidates for public office in the future. One puzzled doctoral candidate asked me what this was that I was driving, but before I could speak, another one, affecting a condescending imitation of a middle-American style of speaking, answered: "This's 'n uhmurican car". At that, all the pointy heads shared a thin, pointy smile and sat back for the ride. In the rearview mirror I saw the faintly amused looks on their faces changing first to disbelief, as they discovered the limitless legroom, then to sheepish grins, as they gave in to the sensation of comfort. I used to wonder, how did they get that way, so estranged from the fruits of the labor of their countrymen?
The answer is, that Americans since the '70's have been sold a carefully constructed narrative of how Detroit and its cars, and "smokestack" industries in general, were bad, like the patriotic white males who made them. Just as our jobs began to disappear, we began to hear we didn't need them anyway, because we didn't make anything others couldn't make better. How convenient! I never could understand all those stories - strangely similar - about the American car that kept "having problems" - never described fully - while the good little Honda did everything right. All my experience, including five years as a professional mechanic, told me that anyone who bothered to change oil on schedule and get a tuneup and brake job once in awhile could get 100,000 miles from his American car with no strain. This was when the new information economy was still in gestation, but, in retrospect, one can see how the fault lines were being drawn, between those who would go on to become its elites and beneficiaries (mostly the converts to Japanese cars) and those who would be left behind (mostly drivers of American cars).
But, at least in the matter of cars, he who laughs last is laughing best. All those who eagerly took the "Japanese do it better" bait are now learning what any American who grew up in the fifties knew. For us, saying something "must have been made in Japan" was an insult, the equivalent of "where did you find it, in a Crackerjack box?" Now gnash your teeth, proud Toyota drivers, for the stamp "Made in Japan" on your car proclaims to the world YOU'RE DRIVING A PIECE OF JUNK!
Amen to everything Mr Jacobi said!
I remember when anyone seen driving a Jap car was considered a traitor, drew remarks of contempt, and may as well have been piloting a Zero bearing down on Pearl.
I never bought the garbage that their cars were better. God bless Henry Ford!
Gilbert Jacobi makes a valuable point. There is no doubt that American cars had quality problems, particularly in the '70s and '80s. But there is also no doubt that the magnitude of those problems was amplified by a media eager to bash Detroit as part of a larger effort to bash America. One of the prime sources of the anti-Detroit drumbeat was Consumer Reports, a magazine whose parent organization, Consumers Union, was deemed subversive by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
At the same time Detroit could do nothing right in the eyes of the media, Japan could do no wrong. As a result, people who had problems with their American cars saw those problems as proof of Detroit's overarching incompetence, whereas those who had problems with their Japanese cars figured they were merely unlucky. Auto blogger Peter DeLorenzo even suggests that Consumer Reports stop writing about cars for a while: "weren't you the guys that basically forged your influence over the domestic automobile industry by holding up Toyota as an example of everything good and righteous and great about quality automobiles and regularly took great pleasure in reminding everyone of that fact - especially the Detroit automakers - whom you relentlessly took pot shots at and trashed with glee every chance you got? Yeah, we thought so. Maybe you ought to take a break from the car business for a while - after all, if you can't write anything good about Toyota, what are you guys going to write about?"
And the myth of Japanese superiority took another hit today: Honda is recalling 437,000 cars over faulty airbags made by a Honda supplier in Japan.
@Mr. Allen (#36)
My father, who drove Pontiacs and one Buick until he went to Cadillac in retirement, has this to say: "I'll never buy a car from the people who bombed Pearl Harbor."
Mssrs. Piatak / Jacobi,
There is a certain convergence that happens. Making industrials more profitable (meaning, of course, forcing offshoring, mass layoffs, asset sales, and "right-sizing") made the banking elite rich(er). The leftist activists in the media who have hated wholesome, traditional values most associated with middle Americans (which is a wide term that applies outside of the Midwest sometimes) were only too happy to oblige in destroying their economies. The leftist intellectuals (meaning both libertarians and socialists) were so ideologically blinded that they ignored basic facts in the arguments to preserve our auto industry (whether that be exactly how important R&D contributions were to a capitalist economy or how many jobs would be lost by honest working people with no equivalent replacements). So there you have it, a consensus of sorts to destroy the industry.
I read two quotes from Mark Twain this morning that made me think of this conversation:
"Talking of patriotism what humbug it is," he wrote; "it is a word that always commemorates a robbery."
Further: "Patriotism is being carried to insane excess. I know men who do not love God because He is a foreigner."
Mr. McCabe,
That's Mark Twain, deserter, you're quoting on patriotism. Patriotism may or may not be the last refuge of scoundrels, but it beats hanging out in bars and universities.
Rush Limbaugh inadvertantly mentioned that the UAW is behind the spin campaign against Toyota, which bulit its assembly plants in non-union areas (and paid decent wages). Honda chose Marysville because it was a white region, and not racially plagued Detroit. It's much easier to train workers who are not given both to laziness and rioting.
Sorry folks, Detroit created its own problems, but they think Oh-bummer will solve all their ills.
As to patriotism, loyalty, etc....perhaps one should read Tom Fleming's Morality of Everyday Life to better understand this topic. Might see where some of us are coming from in addressing the topic vis-a-vis the domestic auto industry.
As to locations for production, worry not, it seems all Big 3 manufacturing will soon end up in racially homogenous Chinese provinces.
@43, Eagle, thanks for the suggestion. Having just started a new job, I just bought a copy. Now if I could only buy some time.
@37. The invaluable M. Stanton Evans published a magazine called Consumers Digest. That was a good alternative to the leftist Consumer Reports, as well as a rare example of a conservative pundit acually doing something practical to help his country.
With regards to the free trade aspect of the debate, it is interesting to note the similarities between 19th Century Britain and late 20th Century USA.
In their respective timeframes, each was the world's industrial powerhouse; then along came free trade. As Correlli Barnett noted in 'The Collpase of British Power', so pervasive had free trade become by 1914 that the Royal Navy imported the blue dyes used in its uniforms from Germany, and the country had no light engineering sector to speak of, with the effect that clockmakers had to be imported from Sweden, Switzerland and the USA in ordert to supervise the production of bomb timers. Free trade had previously been responsible for the collapse of British agriculture in the 1890's, weakening the country's ability to wage war as a result of its dependence on foreign food.
Since the mid-1970's, there seems to have been a similar trend towards advocacy of free trade. The consequence seems to have been the decline of the US auto industry. Maybe price isn't everything.
Mr. Kelly, you have, in effect, supported my argument for the importance of R&D associated with auto-making. As the single largest manufacturing sector, the auto industry represents the largest slice of the R&D pie - still, just barely, in the US and certainly worldwide. The ideologues often argue with me that it matters not where efficiencies drive this sort of work, but the German, Japanese, and Korean elites believe otherwise, taking many "non free market" steps to ensure that they retain or grow their share of the worldwide investment in auto R&D.
As to the effectiveness, competency, and overall ability of the American auto engineers, this is a different discussion altogether that many have confusingly fused with the R&D argument. Jospeh Stiglitz and others have recently been talking about where American brainpower is going. It's no secret that the many of "best and brightest" (by whatever classification, but certainly including top engineering graduates who are valued for their "analytical abilities") have headed to Wall Street in numbers disproprtionate to the actual value of that (nonproductive) sector.
Tom Piatak commented:
“I have noticed, though, that, generally speaking, libertarians have a hard time understanding what the word traitor means, because, generally speaking, they have no loyalty to anything except their abstract economic theories. “
Given the principle that it is very unwise to grant government any power that you would not wish your worst enemy to wield and given the type of person that is most likely to rise to the top of a political system, I think this is a very valid approach. This is particularly true in a democratic system where the course of legislation is somewhat unpredictable and always changing –usually towards the increase of the amount of power that is given to those in control at the moment.
Moral principles and economic laws are standards that are the measure of any action or policy regardless of who is in charge. Whether a candidate is promising unions more coercive powers to obtain their votes or whether the candidate is promising some protectionist scheme to obtain votes, both are destructive to the economy and society to which one is claiming to have their loyalty. Government enforced unionism and artificial trade barriers increase unemployment and increase the cost of products for everyone and lowers the real wage for all. This is very counterproductive if your goal is to strengthen the economy to which you have feelings of loyalty.
Unconditional political loyalty to a particular company, even one as large as GM necessarily comes at the expense of one’s real loyalty to the rest of the economy, society and nation. If one’s stated political goal is to maximize prosperity and freedom for all then it makes sense to pursue principles that will actually achieve those things. “Abstract economy theory” as well as historical fact overwhelmingly show that free markets are by far the best way to achieve these goals. Government intervention and protectionism lead to economic atrophy and decay which produces the opposite effects.
Increased capital makes labor more productive. A man with a better tool can make more and better things with the same effort than a man with a more primitive tool. It costs a significant amount of money to ship large products across an ocean to the world’s largest automobile market. What if the world’s largest supply of capital was located in the world’s largest automobile market and did not require an expensive trip across an ocean to bring goods to market? It sounds pretty simple but somehow Detroit/DC managed to really screw it up on a massive scale. The evidence really points more toward collapse from within than from an attack from without.
According to numbers which are probably optimistic GM looses about $2000 on each car they sell whereas Toyota despite all the hoops they have to jump through can still make about $1500 on each car. In the national economy losses like this are a drag not a contribution. Enormous amounts of capital are tied up in this corporation rather than in projects that could be creating wealth not squandering it. Perpetuating this company and others like it is costing us enormous amounts of money not only in the expense of covering its operating losses but also in increased unemployment and welfare payments and other costs associated with propping up a failed industry. These losses are paid for not only by the heavy burden of the taxpayers but even by those who are net tax-receivers who receive less in their check from the government than they would if they were productively employed.
Cutting the current GM loose and government ceasing of intervention would certainly cause some short term hardship for those involved however in the slightly longer run the economy would be strengthened. Not only would we be stopping the dumping of money down a hole, the capital and labor that are now being put to destructive (or at best very inefficient) use would be released into the market and made available to those who may have more incentive to produce products that the market wants at a price it is willing to pay. Perhaps it would take the form of a number smaller better managed companies with names like Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet competing for the industrial equipment, labor and materials in Michigan?