Good point
Holman Jenkins, yesterday's Wall Street Journal:
When the L.A. Times wrote [nearly 25 years ago], the labor cost differential versus a Japanese plant was about $2,000 per car. Twenty years later, the cost difference was about $2,000 per car. Today's lament is, "The bankers have benefited from a bailout, so why shouldn't auto workers?" But they have, they have -- for decades. For the business model described above could not possibly have survived otherwise.
The U.S. auto industry sounds so very Atlas Shrugged: one government "fix" leads to another which leads to another, and pretty soon you have a big, intractable mess.
All I know is that the UAW members I know (and I know quite a few here in the Detroit suburbs) thinks the UAW 'won'. They don't expect any change for years.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie | April 30, 2009 at 02:27 PM
A car-maker bankruptcy is a tragedy; a trillion dollar bailout is a statistic.
Posted by: TheBigHenry | April 30, 2009 at 02:48 PM