Foreign vs. Domestic, Pt IV - The Greedy Incompetent Americans Myth

It has always struck OffHisMeds as more than passing strange that Americans have spent so much time demonizing "greedy short-sighted American corporations" and "corrupt unions" as not only the source of all ills with American cars but as a justification for purchasing a foreign car. Granted, neither has done everything right, and the UAW in particular had a sordid history in the 70's and 80's of subsidizing laziness and incompetence, but so what? Can anybody plausibly argue that Toyota and Volkswagen - or the Unions that represent their workers - are less greedy, less corrupt? Particularly in light of the recent news that America would be contributing hundreds of billions to bail out the Euro and the hundreds of billions we spend yearly defending Japan, Inc. and Europe, Inc., it's clear that "virtue" is relative.

Common Sense would dictate that corporations the world over have at minimum the same regard (or disregard) for ethical conduct, and in countries less open than America (which is all of them) it is arguably worse. I give you Toyota's decade long fraud on the problem with Sudden Acceleration as a case in point.

But it's as if in America none of that is even contemplated, much less matters. American consumers give foreign car companies a big thumbs up in the Virtue department every time they enthusiastically turn tens of thousands of their hard-earned dollars over to buy a Corolla, Jetta, Civic or Sonata. Voting with their pocketbook, they not only give foreign companies a Hall Pass when it comes to corporate virtue, they actually invest them with a virtue greater than our own. It is the Thinking Man's lament: but that we viewed as critically the conduct of foreigners and their corporations as we do our own. The fact that we don't speaks volumes about the Democrat Party's decades-long demonization of American business, the demonization by Republicans of Unions, and an endemic intellectual and moral laziness on the part of many American consumers. It's strange to think Liberals with their agenda and Conservatives with theirs are both milking our Consumerist ethic so diligently towards a common goal: the destruction of manufacturing in America.

Can you imagine the Germans or Japanese tolerating such self-destructive behavior? That said, the politicization of manufacturing has contributed to popular numerous misperceptions about the quality of domestically manufactured goods, and these have tended to focus most particularly on the automobile, the icon of manufacturing. Sure, they may be other mechanized things with more pizzazz than a car - yachts, Apache helicopter gunships, space shuttles, etc. - but those tend to be out of price range of most folks, and thus we must settle for automobiles in probing the psyche of the American consumer.

Many car buyers in America have some sense of loyalty to their fellow citizens; unfortunately, most do not. They go for "value" as it is portrayed in the media (predictably skewed against American car companies); they go for trends, and foreign cars are certainly trendy; and finally, they make no allowance for even the slightest of differences in Quality Ratings between domestic and foreign cars, regardless of whether the criteria are faulty or not. So, for example, if Consumer Reports gives Toyota a quality rating of 92 on a particular model and GM gets a score of 89 on a comparable model, most folks would make no allowance for the statistical insignificance. And if the GM car was projected to cost over its lifetime an extra ten cents per day, these same consumers would make no allowance, even if the end result was keeping Americans employed and generating taxes for the mortgage deductions, Social Security and Medicare benefits that they no doubt feel they are entitled to.

I wonder if anybody contemplates the irony of purchasing foreign cars at the expense of our own economy, only to discover that that wasn't quite enough, and that now we as taxpayers will have to further mortgage our children's future spending untold Trillions every decade to subsidize a Greek's right to retire at age 53; a German's right to 10 weeks of paid vacation; Japanese, German or Korean car company's ability to dump the retirement costs of their employees on their government, or the monstrous welfare states they have all constructed, which are then directly subsidized by American taxpayers' - and car purchasers' - dollars.

Try explaining that one to your kids when the bill comes due.