Creative Class

This one takes the cake:

Even as Detroit’s Big Three teeter on collapse, United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Saturday that the problem is not the union’s contract with the automakers and that getting the automakers back on their feet means figuring out a way to turn around the slumping economy.  “The focus has to be on the economy as a whole as opposed to a UAW contract,” Gettelfinger [the UAW President] told reporters on a conference call … Gettelfinger blamed the problems the auto industry is suffering from on things beyond its control — the housing slump, the credit crunch that has made financing a vehicle tough and the 1.2 million jobs that have been lost in the past year. “We’re here not because of what the auto industry has done,” he said. “We’re here because of what has happened to the economy.”

Er… really. So why aren’t VW, BMW, Damlier-Benz, Toyota, or Honda in this kind of mess?

I’ve had my share of tiffs with David Brooks, but he nails this one:

Granting immortality to Detroit’s Big Three does not enhance creative destruction. It retards it. It crosses a line, a bright line. It is not about saving a system; there will still be cars made and sold in America. It is about saving politically powerful corporations. A Detroit bailout would set a precedent for every single politically connected corporation in America. There already is a long line of lobbyists bidding for federal money. If Detroit gets money, then everyone would have a case. After all, are the employees of Circuit City or the newspaper industry inferior to the employees of Chrysler? …

If ever the market has rendered a just verdict, it is the one rendered on G.M. and Chrysler. These companies are not innocent victims of this crisis. To read the expert literature on these companies is to read a long litany of miscalculation. Some experts mention the management blunders, some the union contracts and the legacy costs, some the years of poor car design and some the entrenched corporate cultures … A federal cash infusion will not infuse wisdom into management. It will not reduce labor costs. It will not attract talented new employees. As Megan McArdle of The Atlantic wittily put it, “Working for the Big Three magically combines vast corporate bureaucracy and job insecurity in one completely unattractive package.”