The public already has cast a landslide vote on the nation’s automotive industry. They hate it.
And why shouldn’t they? The Big Three have generated a level of consumer satisfaction not seen in America since the English started taxing tea in Boston.
The Republican Party also has been peddling a highly disagreeable product. And if its members desire to regain relevancy, it is incumbent upon them to use whatever meager power they still possess to stop the Democrats from passing a bailout of the Big Three car companies.
We should be calling this a bailout of incompetence, corporate cronyism and unionism, actually — and a step toward nationalization, as Congress wants a stake in these companies in exchange for, you know, helping out. (Does anyone remember the Trabant?)
What is one to make of Democrats enlisting the genius who helped bring about the Freddie and Fannie mess, Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and a Michigan senator, Carl M. Levin, to craft the Detroit bailout legislation? It’s a shame Jack Abramoff is too busy to chip in with his thoughts.
Though Congress already has approved $25 billion in loans to prop up a defective auto industry, one wonders if anyone in Washington has asked if this near- corpse is worth saving in its present form. If it is, surely other corporations and investors will excavate the facets of the business that work.
Yet, if you happen to listen to backers of a car bailout, you may be led to believe that the Tahoe is a pillar of American life. “It is critical that the nation understand this isn’t just a Michigan problem, that one in 10 jobs in the country are impacted by the auto industry,” Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently proclaimed in an interview.
We’re still going to buy cars, Madame Governor, but perhaps we will buy them from companies that have the temerity to say “no” to unions and crushing legacy costs associated with them. These corporations may not even be headquartered in Michigan.
Nancy Pelosi is worried that if General Motors declares bankruptcy, the union will lose power and executives will make off like bandits. So she would like taxpayers to help General Motors pay for the nearly 450,000 retirees who live off extravagant pensions and free medical care.
Now, unions claim they simply want “working” families to make livable wages. But Dr. Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, calculates the average compensation for employees of the Big Three auto companies at $73 an hour. The U.S. employees of Toyota are at $48 — a 52 percent differential.
GM, after all, is the company that caved to an idea that only a union or government agency could possibly concoct: a jobs bank.
A jobs bank is not about jobs, per se. No, in a jobs bank, employees are paid nearly full salary to avoid all work and hang out. Sounds more like a think tank than a job bank. And no taxpayer should be on the hook for either of these enterprises.
Now, we were warned that allowing the banking system to fail would result in a credit crunch that would turn New York City into a dust bowl. But GM shares are already worth somewhere between absolute zero and the price of newspaper stock. That’s what investors think of the company.
So this bailout is about taxpayer money being handed to a rotting business-union partnership that engaged voluntarily in agreements it can’t honor.
Let them go bankrupt and work it out among themselves, like everyone else.
I, for one, have been punished enough. I already own an American car.
Reach columnist David Harsanyi at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
