GM and Toyota are pretty much locked at the hip. As are Ford, Mazda, Volvo and Aston Martin. From what my sources tell me, most European car manufacturers are Volkswagen-owned. Fords are made a a plant in Dagenham, and sales are OK. Maybe, the automakers would be smart to move 100% offshore and ship everything on massive roll-on-roll-off ships from cheap labor countries like Indonesia, Peru, and Sierra Leone. That ought to keep the prices down, and congress from meddling — somewhat.

3 cheers for the global economy everybody! If the elites can’t ram it down our throat, then they’ll give it to us by enema.

I understand economies of scale, and have no problem with the concept. My final point was congressional meddling in manufacturing probably caused many of the problems, especially on the pollution.

I recently watched the movie Tucker, if it holds close to the truth, the big guys had no problem maligning the little guy — even though Tucker made his pile as a war profiteer. However, he did produce 50 cars and 49 of them still run, that’s a better record than the oligopoly can match.

Detroit auto workers make twice as much money as non-union workers in the South. Start there.

Why would we start (or restart, after several days of extensive discussion) from a faulty premise? The wage disparity has been discussed, and it’s not two to one.

Your comments at the end remind me of the wry comments my wife’s mechanic engineer father and brothers make–try hitting “CTRL/ALT/DELETE” when you’re driving 70 on the highway. (I think they make that point in arguing computer engineers aren’t realy engineers.) Oh, and they don’t work the auto industry.

An excellent point.

No offense taken. It’s just that, after 250 comments over two lengthy threads, it gets a bit tiresome to have people continue to fall back on a line that Tom Piatak dealt with in his first piece over at Takimag.

On to other matters. Do I think that Detroit could make cars that are, on average, more fuel efficient than the ones they make today? Yes, and not just because the Japanese do, but because Detroit has. Sadly, in the American market, those models haven’t sold–even to people who claim that they don’t buy American-made cars because they aren’t fuel efficient.

I didn’t find the Geo Metro, Chevrolet Sprint, and Pontiac Firefly much to my liking, but those who place fuel efficiency among their top concerns should have. For the size of the cars, they received very good safety ratings; for the price, they received good quality ratings. The only thing they didn’t have was a foreign name.

As for your comparison with computer production, there are a couple problems. First, if you’re suggesting that internal-combustion engines should have seen the kinds of performance increases that semiconductors have seen, I’m afraid we’re talking apples and oranges. There’s a big difference between increasing processor speed and making the physical process of combustion more efficient.

Second (and I think that this is more likely your point), if you point to the quality of personal computers as somehow “higher” than the quality of Detroit-made automobiles, I’d like to know what kind of computer you use. The Macs we use here in the office (and which I use at home) are, in my experience, far more reliable and higher quality than the average PC running Windows. That said, the level of maintenance required to keep any personal computer running smoothly is considerably higher, in my experience, than the level of maintenance required to keep my car running smoothly. We just tend not to think of software upgrades, closing out programs when the computer slows down, virus scans, and the myriad other things we do every day to keep our computers in shape as “maintenance.”

The number of people who’ve ever experienced the equivalent of a “blue screen of death” in a car (which, essentially, would mean the car simply ceasing to function while you’re driving it down the highway at 70 mph) is next to none.

Frankly, if my car required the level of maintenance that my Macs (much less others’ PCs) required, I would have traded it in long ago for a horse, because the horse would be lower maintenance.

Maybe we should ignore their advice for once.

My concern with losing the big 3 could be simpy broken down into two aspects: 1) the direct damage done to the people who would lose jobs (99% of whom are good, relatively innocent workers), and 2) the macro concern of a categorical loss of a sector of manufacturing in our country.

The loss of brand, identity or company does not concern me directly, nor does, in this case at least, the loss of the tradition of making cars. I do not care in the least if the Japanese “win” this one.

As to point 1, it would need to be argued that some sort of bailout would be more helpful to these people than wellfare and temporary unemployment or early retirement. (many companies across this great country of ours are straining under the bulk of employed baby-boomers who are at the height of their earnings potential but may lack the productivity they make up for with experience.) Furthermore, then, the style of bailout would have to be clarified. I personally cannot follow the arguments against or for types of Bankruptcy, but I find many of the arguments against Bankruptcy to be unconvincing. Also, for the bailout argument to succeed, we would need to show that Detroit could put it to good use, i.e., not just buy us 5 more years, not just buy us temporary employment, but that it is a true help in a storm. Detroit’s own ugly history, dominated by idiot CEOs and heavy-handed union bosses hurts this case with very little room to move.

As to point 2, it would need to be argued that our country would be at a loss for not making cars any more. I have not really heard why that is true. Although I instinctively cringe at the concept of a total loss of manufacturing, I don’t possess the macro picture to know what losing ownership of auto plants would amount to in our country. I have been in favor of protecting manufacturing in general because a huge number of guys I know need to work with their hands and bodies, and pouring a latte just is not the same as working making stuff.

Without being so damn logical, I could say this. At least in Japanese traditional culture, if a man dishonors his family, he falls on his sword. If the CEOs and unions came out and admitted their shame and fell on their swords, then sign the checks tomorrow and let the past be the past. Unfortunately, pride and honor are rare commodities in corporate elites, union elites and the halls of Washington D.C. — all the parties trying to do this deal.

I favor a tariff system of some sort, but that is really extraneous to the issue at hand. The question at hand is do we act to try avoid the enormous economic, social, and fiscal costs that will flow from the failure of the Big Three, not what the ideal tax policy for America should be. And if you think that a US political system that has been systematically dismantling tariffs for years, to the great detriment of American manufacturing, will suddenly begin imposing them so as not to lose the foreign manufacturers who have moved some of their operations to the United States, you are much more optimistic than anyone here.