Filed by Bil at 9:48 pm under Environmentality, Fightin' Words, Politics, Social Issues

All righty then. The bailout for the automakers didn’t go through. Like everyone else, I’ve got some thoughts and opinions. For the benefit of the readers, I’ll try to breeze right through them and get to something that hasn’t been discussed ad nauseam.

The rejection of the Auto bailout is good because:
- fewer tax dollars are going to help out irresponsible money-giants.
- this will (hopefully) force Detroit to rethink current business standards, increase the quality of their vehicles and maybe, just maybe, focus on environmentally-friendly products.

It is bad because:
- the country is going to see even more jobs lost. Like, a lot more jobs. There would have been mass layoffs anyway, but they might have saved a few.
- it sends a message that Manhattan trumps the Midwest in importance to Congress, and that’s not fair. Where were the tough standards for the Wall Street tycoons who also flew into Washington in private jets?

I am not necessarily a conservative, but I do insist that my tax dollars are wisely spent.

I don’t mind paying higher taxes as long as the whole population benefits (and not just me or just one group of people). And if we’re going to bail out industries that we think the national and global economies depend on, we should include all the industries that have such an impact. If we want to bail out the banks, we also ought to bail out the auto industry. Personally, I am all in favor of the government telling Wall Street exactly how to use their massive bailout checks, and I am definitely in favor of a small amount of that money going to save the car factory workers’ jobs. The Big 3 need restructuring in a bad, bad way, but I certainly don’t want to see the workers lose their livelihoods…which will undoubtedly happen BEFORE the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Chrysler give up any of their own money or power. It’s a textbook catch-22.

The unions have been blamed by certain idiots in the Capitol for the entire economic recession. They were, according to the Republicans in congress, the cause of the Big 3’s woes to begin with. Obviously, this is not accurate. The unions heads may have made some decisions that ultimately hurt the union workers over the long-term – this is a whole other discussion – but we can all agree, I think, that unions in general have provided millions of Americans with decent, middle-class lives that would not have been so nice without unions.

Now. About increasing the responsibility of the Big 3. We can’t expect the union workers who build the products to come up with better product design – they don’t design ‘em, they just make ‘em. We aren’t seeing the top of the chains invest enough in better design and research; they seem to only be making decisions based on what has worked in the past. We are seeing startups in Silicon Valley take on the environmentally-friendly front, but those cars are way over priced and can’t be mass-produced yet, so they aren’t a complete solution. The middle class is disappearing and the gap is widening.

My question is this: where is the intelligentsia of the auto industry? Who will come up with better designs that will increase profitability for the CEOs while allowing the union workers to keep their jobs at their current rates? Who are the heroes Detroit needs, and where are they hiding?

What we desperately need right now is a generation of automotive engineers and designers who understand the principles of Capitalism. We need people who want to save the environment by making giant steps, not little ones, and who are capable of doing so by changing the overall way cars are made. They need to be able to retrain the union workers so that the same people can do the new jobs, and their cars need to be as marketable to an entire population as SUVs were in the mid-90’s. They need to be reliable and appealing so that the money people will invest with eagerness in this new line of products.

One person will not save the industry, that’s a fact. It’s going to take an entire group of people with that kind of education and the balls to work their way into the system with a mission to change from the old ways to a new way. Kind of like a crack team of outlaws, each with their own specialty, all working together. We need the A-Team of automotive manufacturing culture.

If you’re out there, we need you. We’re ready for you. Get in your plug-in hybrid commando van and save the day!