TheNewWorldMan
phased plasma rifle in 40-watt range
As in most arguments, there's Side A, Side B, and the truth...
I don't believe anyone could seriously dispute (at least with any empirical evidence to support them) that American cars had serious quality issues back in the Seventies and Eighties.
Now as for the "whys" behind that, they're rather more complex than the stock "blame the UAW" mantra that comes from the Right. And as for the Left's notion that everything would have been fine if we'd just slapped huge tariffs on imports, well, that wouldn't have solved the problem either.
What happened, mostly, was that America got accustomed to being the top dog, and assumed that people would buy American in the future merely because they had done so in the past. Japan, meanwhile, imported quality control ideas from America, put them to rigorous use, and improved efficiency across the board. Japanese automobile corporations were, to put it plain and simple, more efficient and productive than their American counterparts.
Much is made of the "entitlement mentality" that American workers had, but those who criticize the UAW usually fail to address the other half of that coin: management's salaries and compensations in U.S. corporations, and how the same capitalist elite most of the anti-UAW crowd lauds required vastly higher compensation to do the same job in America that their counterparts did in Japan.
This is one reason I don't believe bailouts are a good idea: the model of American auto companies is fundamentally flawed and far less efficient than Japan's. In any event, if we're going to make workers eat, say, a 25% pay cut, then middle managers need to take 50%, high-level managers 70%, and CEOs 85%. As you'll see from the link above, that would mean the U.S. auto industry would still be more top-heavy than its Japanese counterparts, but it would be a good start.
If I were in the White House, those are the terms I'd offer for a bailout.
And no tariffs...not against Japan, anyway. Now China is a different story, but Japan is a fully developed peer, not some sweatshop of workers living in tin shacks, and there's no reason we shouldn't be able to compete on a level playing field.
I don't believe anyone could seriously dispute (at least with any empirical evidence to support them) that American cars had serious quality issues back in the Seventies and Eighties.
Now as for the "whys" behind that, they're rather more complex than the stock "blame the UAW" mantra that comes from the Right. And as for the Left's notion that everything would have been fine if we'd just slapped huge tariffs on imports, well, that wouldn't have solved the problem either.
What happened, mostly, was that America got accustomed to being the top dog, and assumed that people would buy American in the future merely because they had done so in the past. Japan, meanwhile, imported quality control ideas from America, put them to rigorous use, and improved efficiency across the board. Japanese automobile corporations were, to put it plain and simple, more efficient and productive than their American counterparts.
Much is made of the "entitlement mentality" that American workers had, but those who criticize the UAW usually fail to address the other half of that coin: management's salaries and compensations in U.S. corporations, and how the same capitalist elite most of the anti-UAW crowd lauds required vastly higher compensation to do the same job in America that their counterparts did in Japan.
This is one reason I don't believe bailouts are a good idea: the model of American auto companies is fundamentally flawed and far less efficient than Japan's. In any event, if we're going to make workers eat, say, a 25% pay cut, then middle managers need to take 50%, high-level managers 70%, and CEOs 85%. As you'll see from the link above, that would mean the U.S. auto industry would still be more top-heavy than its Japanese counterparts, but it would be a good start.
If I were in the White House, those are the terms I'd offer for a bailout.
And no tariffs...not against Japan, anyway. Now China is a different story, but Japan is a fully developed peer, not some sweatshop of workers living in tin shacks, and there's no reason we shouldn't be able to compete on a level playing field.
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