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Posted by D Sherman on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 00:44:31 :
In Reply to: ... but underestimated the impact... posted by MoparNorm on Monday, December 15, 2008 at 21:04:12 :
I don't disagree that it would be similar with the auto industry. Fragments of the less-successful companies would get absorbed by the better ones, and areas around the defunct factories would be seriously hurt. Where we disagree is in the idea that the government can or should try to keep this from happening. Unemployment pay is a good thing. Some job retraining funding is a good thing. But trying to subsidize unsuccessful businesses, no matter how big, is only going to create an even bigger problem later on.
If we really want to get into long-term planning, and we really want to have a truly "all-American" manufacturing base again, it's not enough for the federal government to sell bonds to foreign investors so as to raise enough money to prop up failing American manufacturers. If we really want globally-competitive manufacturing, from raw materials to finished goods, we'll have to do things that are going to be pretty unpalatable. We'll have to say good-bye to those cushy old-time "they can't fire me because I have seniority" union jobs, but we'll also have to end the management philosophy that says employees are disposable and all that matters is who will work for the least $/hr. We'll also have to relax a lot of environmental and even workplace safety rules. How can we be self-sufficient in manufacturing when we no longer have even ONE smelter in this country and everything contains metals? Our mines ship their concentrates to Canada, to Belgium, and to Asia, and then our manufacturers have to pay to import the metals back into this country. Any manufacturing process that uses anything remotely toxic or dirty has to be done in some other part of the world. Do we even have one primary steel mill left in this country?
If Democrats won't stand for relaxing environmental rules, workplace safety rules, and labor rights, Republicans won't stand for demanding that companies get back to long-term planning, both with products and people, even if that means the CEO can't artificially pump up this quarter's results to make the stock market happy so he'll get a bigger bonus. So the result is, that "bipartisan agreement" means doing the one thing that both the Democrats and the Republicans can accept -- throwing unimaginable sums of borrowed money at the failing companies.
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