Today I read in the paper that Obama is giving the Auto industry the heave ho. This could just be some political grandstanding to distract voters who are still pissed about AIG but the gist of the story was that GM and Chrysler have missed their deadlines, are not meeting the current terms of their loans and won’t be able to meet the requirements of the additional requests either. If that were to hold true, that means that Chrysler and GM would either need to close up shop and sell things off, or declare bankruptcy and try to reorganize.
Now no one would want to see 150,000 people without jobs because those two companies went under, not to mention the many other jobs out there that supply the auto industry. I believe my mother’s former employer that she retired from, Hamlin Electronics and its parent company KSS, would be one of those companies severely hurt as they supply air bag sensors to airbag manufacturers. I don’t want to give the impression that I would relish in that individual financial toll. I have lived that problem after a shakeup in the Internet industry. It’s not fun losing your job and eventually your house, cars, retirement accounts, and racking up debt that might take ohhh 6-7 years to just get on top of not to mention repay it all. If you’ve ever had to get food from a church food pantry you’ll have a good idea of what I’m talking about. It’s not something you wish on someone, but on the other hand it was something that has strengthened me and taught me valuable life lessons. Amazingly enough I recovered without any kind of government assistance and ironically a great part of the debt I was repaying was a crushing burden of taxes. It’s striking how the assistance and help of Christian friends and family pulled us through. This is the model of America I strive for….oh but that would rely on Christian values to provide the nations charity. We wouldn’t want to advocate that.
However I would have to admit I would love to see that kind of shakeup in the American auto industry. I would think it should knock the unions back to the stone ages in terms of their 50 – 60 year expansion of wages and benefits well beyond the scope of reasonable. I would think this will not serve Obama well as he lines up a few hundred thousand union workers (also called voters) and summarily betrays them. I'd think this would be like shooting Old Yeller for the democrats. Do you see me doing a little jig? So I’m waiting for Sally Struthers to do a commercial showing the starving children of autoworkers and we can help them with as little as $3000 a month. This should persuade the administration and the democratic majorities to pass whatever stimulus is needed for the auto industry.
No matter what happens this should be interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment