Quote:
Originally Posted by Shazam
What I'm saying is that Japan's car manufacturers did not accomplish what they have accomplished on their own. You expect the domestic manufacturers to live and die by the invisible hand. Do you expect the Japanese manufacturers to do the same? How do you know that their suppliers haven't been teetering on the abyss, and have simply been propped up by their government?
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Japanese auto companies are getting their own bailouts now, but for decades, they have been self-sufficient. A lot of it is due to the concentration of facilities there and a tight rein over manufacture with things like just in time production, etc. and corporate culture and a focus on efficiency and small size (due to the fact that most of the rest of the world doesn't have the American highway system and has more dense cities).
American companies are mess because of the auto unions. American domestic automakers have their pay their employees (who often don't have any work to do because factories are not working to capacity) more than double the wages of the so-called "import" auto makers. Look who is asking for bailout money? It's the domestics, not the imports. If you look at the American bailout, many of the Republican Senators who were against the auto bailout were from states that have Honda, Toyota, Nissan plants, etc. like in Georgia which benefits those states.
Even if you don't bring the UAW into the picture, the Japanese companies were the first to be able to react to the first oil crisis of the 70s which gave them their foot in the door while Detroit kept trying to pump out big gas guzzlers. Detroit already got a bailout in the 80s if people pay attention to history, complaining about the oil crisis and the imports encroaching on their territory. They also got legislation that blocked foreign auto makers from importing over a quota of cars into North America. That's why they started building their own plants in the U.S. Detroit still never learned and decided to keep building SUVs and big trucks as those were their cash cow and they've done nothing but seed their own doom.