WaPo columnist Warren Brown never turns down an opportunity to show Detroit some love. Or at least lash out at its haters. Today he takes on the “sophist nonsense… spun by people who haven’t bothered to check the numbers, and who have paid even less regard to the history of their supposed knowledge,” otherwise known as opposition to the government bailout of a failing industry. And like Michael Jackson’s greatest music video, the arguments appeal to the sense of pathos rather than logic or reason. The financial sector and price-conscious consumers are blamed for dragging down Detroit, despite the fact that both have supported Detroit for decades. The automakers may have slurped all the credit they could get for years, and consumers may have only purchased Detroit iron on price alone, but they’re the ones to blame for the industry’s downfall, reckons Brown. But like the gloved one, Detroit can’t create its own very public trainwreck and then blame people for noticing. Or if you must damn the media and public for calling your failures like they see them, at least do it with a sense of humor. Even Michael Jackson knows that.
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Warren Brown is not the brightest light in the automotive press, and he can be either intellectually dishonest or in denial in support of his points (I’m not sure which). But he has a point about the health care costs of their workers to Detroit, as a handicap. But even under those circumstances, its pretty sorry that the big 3 have only half the home market–probably a quarter of that due to fleet sales–when GM alone had that much in the 60s, and together they had about 90%.
Ronnie: I was trying to point out that Brown is so desperate to blame someone other than Detroit that he is manufacturing windmills to tilt at. The “Ponzi scheme” he decries kept Detroit running until it stopped. “Budget conscious” or “Wal-Mart” shoppers make up much of Detroit’s customer base. Do the Sebrings, Cobalts and Aveos of the world sell on anything besides price point?
Just listen to the guy: “But the more American consumers make those kinds of decisions — choosing goods and services unburdened, or less-burdened, by health-care and pension costs — the more they reduce the protective power of UAW contracts and similar labor agreements. GM could have all of the good intentions in the world; but if Honda, aided by less-expensive labor contracts, can build a car as good as GM for less money, Honda has the clear advantage.
That is an inconvenient truth that pundits here and in similar redoubts of sophistry delight in ignoring. They’d much rather beat up Detroit for mistakes in product judgment real and imagined, as if foreign car companies have made none of the same errors. It’s baloney.”
This redoubt of sophistry doesn’t delight in ignoring why consumers don’t look for the union label. In the age of globalization, it’s pretty hard to feel to guilty about the fact that the person who assembled your car makes $100k/year instead of $140k. Think about your clothes, shoes, food, or any number of other daily-use products with that level of scrutiny and you’ll be on medication before you know it.
Anyway, re-reading the thing I’m almost embarrassed to be taking issue with it. The guy’s making a completely emotional argument, and it just doesn’t hold up.
Warren Brown is no automotive journalist and his weekly columns is a travesty of reportage. The Washington Post ought to explain to its readers how he got that position and then the Post ought to apologize to all. Brown’s weekly are the lightest of puff pieces. What a waste of paper and ink.
His entire column does nothing to support a bailout. It’s a history lesson of all the strategic, long term failures of all the Detroit companies from the last 20 years.
He blames customers for buying the best car for their money when he should blame the D3 for failing to create practical cars people want to buy. He blames the UAW for being too expensive when he should blame management for agreeing to exorbitant pay and benefits.
And I don’t quite understand his riff on Wal-Mart. If anything, GM is the automotive Wal-Mart. They survive on volume of cheap goods. And people shop Wal-Mart because you don’t have a lot of liability when you buy a $40 TV but most people can’t risk $15000 and their primary mode of transportation.
Since Warren Brown is calling me names, I’ll retaliate: Warren Brown is a stuttering midget.
The WB sounds a lot like our good friend and contributor Phil Ressler. Their arguments are perhaps not the most sophisticated but they do have a patina of economic populism that these times call for.
And his broadside at Washington is spot-on. It’s a little known fact mentioned already by somebody from Michigan in another thread that the richest counties in the US are mostly around Washington DC. How do these people get their high incomes? Certainly not by producing anything but by lobbying and redistributing the wealth from the federal government. And from this loot they buy Italian designer bags, French colognes and German cars while laughing at those ignoramuses in Detroit, blue and white collar. They don’t know or perhaps don’t care that their whole lifestyle is made possible by parts of the country where there is still something being produced including Detroit even though they themselves would never buy anything made there.
I’m not sure why TTAC goes to DetN for a WaPo article, especially since there’s a week or so delay, but here’s a link to this week’s article if you want to read more. This week Warren calls us haters again (but this time he’s coined a “witty” term for us, MOP since apparently his dictionary couldn’t help him), and again boards the FAILboat when it comes to high-school debate class. This time, it’s an attempt to say that UAW folks aren’t overpaid because they aren’t paid as much as the haters.
Pundits Peddle Revisionism in Attacking U.S. Automakers
WEGIV:
I’m guessing most if not all of the ‘pundits’ here make less than a typical UAW worker.
He’s right that we can’t blame the D3 for making trucks and SUVs when everyone was buying them. We can blame them for not building competitive small cars at the same time.