Buying American

A Stodghill Says So blog:
This question was asked on TV news: "Would you buy an American car?"
Then a worker at a Detroit plant said, "It's time for a wake up call."
A wake up call for what? To buy only products made by an American company? Wonder where his TV set came from? Or his computer, or the suit hanging in his closet, his wife's new dress, his son's athletic shoes.
Or did he mean products put together in America? If so, our Toyota came from Lexington, Kentucky. Honda makes cars in a plant at Marysville, Ohio and Subaru in another at Princeton, Indiana. Those and other Japanese and German companies have numerous plants in the U.S.A.
I wonder a number of things about this man's wake up call. Does he feel we should be concerned about GM, Chrysler and Ford stockholders and executives making huge salaries and receiving obscene bonuses whether they deserve them or not? Did he rush out and buy a Studebaker or Packard or Hudson when those auto makers were on the verge of going under? Did he insist his new TV set was made here when the Japanese began producing superior products? Did he continue shopping at the locally owned stores downtown when the big boxes were going up? I wonder indeed.
Would I buy an American car, apparently meaning something made by GM, Chrysler or Ford? Should I forget the Chevrolets and Buick that were lemons? How about the Fords or Chryslers? It's decades too late to expect an affirmative answer from me. But we're making them really good now, they cry out. Am I to believe that? Maybe it's true, but why weren't they making a decent product in the past?
So my answer is a resounding "NO." To coin a fresh new phrase, the chickens have come home to roost. Nor do I appreciate the Chrysler TV commercials with American symbols in the background or those from Ford saying Honda makes good lawn mowers. Very cute. I'll bet that one plays well in Central Ohio where Honda is a major employer.
No, Detroit, I've learned my lesson. Learned it the hard way. You'll just have to look elsewhere for a customer. You waited too long to start building them well.

AS USUAL, DICK, WHEN YOU ARE RIGHT-- YOU ARE SO RIGHT!

The first car my father ever owned was a 1950 Studebaker. And I went on a date with my husband in his father's Hudson. And I am editing a book where I speak of our owning a Nash Rambler. Ah, memories, how they linger.

Good post Dick. My husband and I have talked about just that subject often lately. No one bailed out Studebaker or American Motors.

Carol

We live in a global economy weather we like it or not and as time goes by, things will only get more globalized. Globalizition is not nessacarily a bad thing, it can bring the people of the world together.

American companies do not have the total committment to quality that most foreign companies do. There was a study back in the 80's when I was still in my engineering prime about quality in Japan as opposed to quality in America. Ask any American company who fault it is that cars (products) are built badly, and they will, almost to a man, say the workers. The workers don't care, they don't want to work, they don't go the extra mile, ect. Ask a Japanese company the same question, and the reply is always "Managment." They know that when management is really committed to quality, they will build a quality product. They will not keep a worker who does not want to do a good job, and they will come to grips with less profit in order to make a superiour product. That does not translate into something that American managment is willing to do. They will not sacrifice profit for quality, and there is the problem. If they must do something to ensure quality, they will always raise the price of their product so that their profit does not suffer. That usually prices an American made product out of the market.

All of us might be willing to buy an American product if the quality was as high as those made in other countries, but we are not willing to pay three times the price. Labor does indeed cost less in most other countries, but their management is usually satisfied to make a superiour product that they can sell for a lower price, even when it means they might not make as much money themselves.

Another thing that they still have and we don't is employee loyalty. We stopped thinking of employees as people some time ago, and saw them as numbers. We tell them when to work, how to work, how much we will pay them, and then we fire them when we no longer think we need them. Most Japanese companies hire a person for life. Or at least, for life so long as that person remains a good employee. But the thing abou that is, the Japanese see being a good employee at the honorable thing to do, and so they do the best they can always. When the Japanese want to protest something, they work harder, and in that way they let their management know something is wrong. What do Americans do? They go on strike, or quit, or call for a work slowdown.

They are not all right and we all wrong, but we could learn something, especially about the way they view profit.

By the way, after WWII when Japan was known as the worlds most shoddy builder of products, it was an American, Dr. Walter Deming, who went to Japan and taught them how to build great products. It's interesting that American companies won't pay him and his methods all that much attention.

Ecellent points, Don. We have lived in a throw-away society for decades and now some people are paying the price.

I never care where anything is made, Marie. All I care about is whether it works the way it should. I've had my last Detroit product that didn't.

Don,
a good analysis, however things are changing. European labor costs are not cheap. The costs for social services is a big factor but an important one. Employees have benefits!
In some sectors, European manufactures went to Asia for cheap labor and that's what they got. Quality suffered.
American technology was exported and the products imported. American know-how and technology was admired and the business model was emulated. Unfortunately that included "profit only" concerns. The philosophy: "A company is only as good as its workers" was replaced by "A company is only as good as its management." Management took care of itself (perks) and used the employees as pawns. We see the outcome of this philosophy in our economic crisis. People are important - not things. When/if that philosophy can be re-established, we will all benefit.
Look at sports. A manager is replaced/fired when his team doesn't perform.
Management is important, but without the support of the worker, the team, he's as useless as tits on a boar.

The "wake up call" might have been a reference to where we'll be when we have no heavy industry at all here anymore. Aren't cars about it now?

I've owned American and Japanese cars and never had significant problems with either. Am currently driving a Lexus, and it runs great, but I had a Navigator before that, and it served me well, too.

All too true, Abe. I just read a story saying the median pay for an American CEO last year was $7.6 million. The highest was $112.5 million. Yet there are people who claim the union workers are to blame for all the problems.

As for a wake up call, I've been stung by American made cars too many times to ever buy another. I fought the Germans as an infantry rifleman, yet never hesitated in buying two Volkswagens. Both made the junk I had been buying from Detroit look exactly like what it was - planned obsolesence crap.

Dick Stodghill wrote:

All too true, Abe. I just read a story saying the median pay for an American CEO last year was $7.6 million. The highest was $112.5 million. Yet there are people who claim the union workers are to blame for all the problems.

I'm not sure what the connection between salaries and who's to blame for problems is.

An engineer friend who did efficiency studies for one of the Big 3 told me that productivity was dreadful in plants in certain American cities. Is that because they were all angry about CEO salaries?

It certainly played a part in it.

Dick Stodghill wrote:

It certainly played a part in it.

Well, if anger at the boss's salary is what makes these workers significantly less productive, I would suggest they find a different workplace, one where everyone can vote on what everyone else should make. They might get upset at finding out what others think their own true value is, though.

It's called human nature. It's called morale. It's why squad leaders and everyone in positions of authority lead attacks. Then, too, if the workers don't work efficiently the blame lies with leadership, or lack of it. If things aren't going well, look to the top. Ask any general.

I see the parallel, but unless the execs have the kind of authority over their employees that squad leaders have over their members, it's unfair to say they (the execs) are totally to blame, no?

There is a definite problem when CEO's make millions of dollars, and workers can't buy a home, send their kids through college, and don't know if they even have a job from day to day.

A good salary ratio would be 20 - 25 to 1, management to worker. The problem is that the ratio is closer to 500 to 1 right now, and has been growing for years. I've never seen any employee who gave much of a damn what the CEO made, until recently, when they got so greedy that the workers became numbers as CEO salaries grew.

Many people are getting tired of it, and even more are tired ot paying CEO's those kinds of salaries when the company is failing and they are laying off employees or closing down plants. Big time bonus money should be reserved for when a CEO actually did something that helped the company, and not paid as a matter of fact even when the company is losing money.

There is a strong argument being made now for what is called a fair wage law. This is one in which an average worker will actually be paid what it takes to live in a community. I think they should tie the top CEO pay directly to the pay of the lowest paid person in the company, and limit what the CEO makes in overall pay, including perks and bonuses, to about 20 times what the worker makes. That way they can pay a worker $100,000 a year, pay their CEO $2,000,000 and both will be happy.

I also think there should be a cap on what they can charge for a product, so that the $100,000 will buy what the workers need to survive.

Rignt now the true welfare cheats are the executives who are getting millions in salary while the company is getting millions in tax breaks. The only welfare people playing golf at the country clubs and driving Cadillacs are executives, and yet all we hear about are the single moms who dare to pay for a cheap cut of steak with a food stamp card.

If CEOs won't control their greed, and if that greed is hurting the country and the working class that built the country, then yeah, I think someone should step in and handle the situation.

By the way, LC, management is always 100% to blame for poor quality. With the right commitment from mangement to building a superior product, then a quality product will be built. American companies will not make that commitment because they will not take a smaller profit margin. It's actually pretty simple.

By they way, you could send every top level executive at GM, Ford, or Chrysler home for two weeks, and the line supervisors, who make just a bit more money than the assembly line workers, would see that the cars still get produced.

Send the assembly line workers home for a day, and no cars roll off the line.

Should tell you which is the more important position.

Oh, and they (?) always say that they have to pay the high salaries to attract the best executives. I'll tell you for a fact that there are always people in every organization that can step in and run the company just as well as those high paid guys, and they will do it for a fraction of the cost. The problem is that they only way the executives can justify the high salaries is to keep peopel believing they are necessary. Watch what happens when one or two of them die, does the company fail, or does someone step in and do the job? Obvious answer, isn't it.

They could fire every CEO in every company in the country today, and then promote a guy from two rungs down the ladder, and tomorrow the work would still get done, and at a whole lot less of a cost. They just don't want anyone to know that it would work.

Well, I'm hardly going to justify executive salaries, lol. But to me, that's a separate issue. I just don't see workers as totally blameless for putting out a shoddy product (if American cars are indeed shoddy). Labor unions and worker protection laws play a large part in what managers can do.

As a parallel, are school principals to blame for poor test scores?

LC wrote:

Well, I'm hardly going to justify executive salaries, lol. But to me, that's a separate issue. I just don't see workers as totally blameless for putting out a shoddy product (if American cars are indeed shoddy). Labor unions and worker protection laws play a large part in what managers can do.

As a parallel, are school principals to blame for poor test scores?

In some cases, Yes! a principal I am aware of undercut the teachers like it was his duty.

He walked into a fifth grade room where a teacher was trying to get some Math across and blurted out, "What are you doing that for they all have calculators."

Haha, well, I don't know what that principal was thinking, but article after article on the subject blames low scores on "bad teachers that can't be fired." Who knows.

Workers will build a product as good as they're allowed to build it, and poor quality work is always a reason to let a worker go.

Management won't commit to 100% quality, because they refuse to spend the money.

Sad thing is, for 40 years I was part of management.

Just as an aside, I feel that the VW Beetle was probably the closest thing to the perfect automobile that the human brain has devised yet.
I dont know about the heaters on an aircooled engine, but with modern tech, that should be fixable.

Buy American? Where? Perhaps the guys on TV are talking about our Mexican Chevrolets or the Canadian Chryslers with Japanese engines and Chinese electronics and Korean transmissions, etc etc etc.
The nameplate might say some proud old American name, but the name plate itself was probably made in Taiwan.

I guess that if I want to buy an all American made car, I will have to go out to some place in the Mojave desert and dig one up from the sand. It might be old, but a few new parts and some paint should fix it up. Though it has probably been sitting in sand for 50 years, I can always go to the local "American car" dealership and get parts for it made in America...right?