Category: Politics, Religion & Money

The expression “The Big Three” continues to be used, but the truth is these former American behemoths aren’t what they were. Without government intervention, it’s unlikely they would even exist.

Chrysler would have folded in 1979 if not for Jimmy Carter saving the company. Almost thirty years later, in 2008, George W. Bush re-defined Republican Capitalism by going along with rescuing not only Chrysler, but GM and all of Wall Street. Ford wasn’t going bankrupt, but it was included in the rescue package.

Considering that government intervention saved these companies, I think Biden was justified in joining striking unionized workers on the picket line. With all of the Trump lovers among the rank and file, however, I won’t be surprised if the UAW doesn’t endorse Biden.

I re-watched Michael Moore’s 1989 movie Roger & Me, and I’m re-reading his pal Ben Hamper’s entertaining and enlightening book Rivethead (1991), about working the line at GM. Hamper talks about the layoffs he went through, and he says in 1980 the pay was “$12.82 an hour.” Before overtime and not including other benefits, that comes to about $100,000/year in today’s money.

Here’s the thing for me. Detroit got into trouble because American cars sucked. Traveling on business for fifteen years, from the early 80’s through the mid-90’s, I rented many Ford, GM, and Chrysler cars. Year after year, every one one of them, without exception was, at best, disappointing, and most were awful. A particularly bad memory was a new model year Pontiac breaking down, leaving me stranded on a return drive to an airport. The rare occasion when I was given a Toyota rental, I was amazed by the quality. Detroit had a decade-and-a-half chance with me, and it failed. As a result I have never purchased a new American car, and I never will. (That includes Tesla, but for a different reason, named Musk.)

The decline of the American automobile industry was due, in my opinion, to the deadly embrace between management and union leadership that gave Japan an opening in the market. Rampant inflation in the 70’s may have started with the gasoline crisis, but it was fueled in part by union wages, at the same time that Detroit had no fuel-efficient models to offer. What did they come up with? The Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega, two of the worst cars ever made.

Comics Books, The Inflation Canary

For a business, being “fat, dumb, and happy” can be fatal. As I saw at my own former place of employment, it means that contentment with past success can result in a failure to see competition coming up in the rearview mirror. By the time a competitor has passed you, it’s too late to catch up. Fat, dumb, and happy is exactly how Roger Smith comes across in Roger & Me, but it’s also how the GM assembly line workers could be in Rivethead, until the layoffs began

The problem for automobile management and workers today isn’t just climate change, it’s the reality that there is only so much oil left in the world. We have no choice but to find another way to power transportation. The money to pay for the cost of developing alternatives to internal combustion engines will have to come from somewhere.

Will competition between companies result in excellent technologies, or would it be smarter for the government to take the lead and pool technical resources in a singular effort? There are only so many brilliant energy scientists, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers in the world. China seems to be educating a large percentage of them, often in the United States.

With automation already cutting the number of workers needed to assemble a car, the next generation of products will require even less labor. This is something the UAW will have to accept. A point they are rightly harping on is inflated executive pay, especially at the CEO level. Being tone deaf about income inequality isn’t a way for leadership to negotiate in good faith. And with that, I should end this rambling tirade.

Warner Brothers wasn’t the only movie studio with a social conscience in the 30’s. Imitation of Life, from Universal, was one of two 1934 films with Claudette Colbert and Warren William.

Aunt Jemima pancake flour is the basis for this story about class and race, with a devastating portrayal of a black girl who passes for white. There is also a Freudian angle, with a girl falling in love with her mother’s fiancé, who represents the father she never had.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is running for reelection

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/08/1198438410/nancy-pelosi-running-reelection

As a registered Democrat, and being closer to 70 than I am to 60, I say to 83-year-old Nancy Pelosi, “NO, a thousand times NO!”

This bid for reelection by Pelosi is pure egotistical hubris. Her announcement shows a lack of judgment that is, in itself, proof that she should retire at the end of this term. Dianne Feinstein should quit immediately, as should Mitch McConnell. For their own sake, as well as the nation’s. RBG should have quit the Supreme Court, but instead she died while seated on the bench, and look at how that turned out.

They’re all too frickin’ old for national public office, including Donald and Joe. The only concern I would have with Biden dropping out of the race is that would most likely make Kamala the candidate. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer should throw her hat into the ring. Is that still an expression?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/24/how-gretchen-whitmer-made-michigan-a-democratic-stronghold

Take a look at this graph of United States births, highlighting the Baby Boom. It starts in 1946, the year Trump was born. I’ve never understood why it was supposed to have ended in 1964. My opinion is, the boom was over when the number of births matched ’46, which happened in ’61, when Obama was born.

There has never been a president who was born in the 1950’s, the Baby Boom decade, and at this point it’s almost a certainty there never will be. What we have now is Democratic and Republican leadership that is too old to continue leading to the end of the decade, but refusing to accept that. What’s keeping these politicians going is competition amongst themselves, fueled by their unremitting egos. Or perhaps it’s the simple fear of death.

Just as in families, where children must take over for their elderly parents, younger elected officials need to exert more pressure on senior politicians until they see the harm they are causing by refusing to retire.

By the way, the graph also shows why immigrants are the solution to keeping Social Security going in the long term.

“Do Your Own Research” is a favorite slogan of conspiracy theory nuts. It was used during the pandemic to promote hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Valid research leads to the conclusion they are not treatments for Covid-19. DYOR has found a home in cryptocurrency circles.

At my high school reunion last night, a guy from my brother’s graduating class was pitching crypto. He said he has a Bachelor’s in Economics from the Wharton School. I told him I have a Bachelor’s in Economics from a small state college.

The Wharton School’s reputation has taken something of a hit from Trump’s fondness for touting his attendance there. For me, the guy last night added another mark against Wharton.

He talked up crypto as though his concentration had been in marketing. “The collapse of so many crypto exchanges?” I asked. “Corrections are expected. The market is volatile.” “Inadequately regulated markets,” was my reply. Etc. Eventually he resorted to pulling out “Do Your Own Research,” and I said, “I already have, and I’m not interested.”