Creative Class

At the 2008 Davos billionaire’s prom, Bill Gates gave a speech calling for “creative capitalism.” His message was roughly that corporations are good at solving problems, and the world has enormous problems. If companies would apply some of their researchers, expertise, and money to these problems they might be able to do things that have escaped governments and NGO’s.

If it were anyone but Gates, arguably the world’s best business strategist, this would have been only mildly interesting and a slightly mushy idea. And maybe it would have faded away but Michael Kinsey, founder of Slate among other publications, decided that there was a book here. Rather than write it, or assemble a collection of essays by invitation only, he set up a blog and publicized it among economists. The result was an ongoing conversation among people like Ed Glaeser, Robert Reich, Larry Summers, and lots of people I’ve never heard of but I’ll bet most economists have.

The resulting dialogue was all published as a book (Creative Capitalism) last December that I picked up and read last weekend (some of it anyway). It’s not a fully formed argument and doesn’t reach any conclusions but it’s a great argument and seems appropriate to this blog. You don’t have to buy the book, the blog is live again.

Which car company is more “American”? A Big Three car maker which off-shores jobs and lays off American workers, or a foreign transplant that is ramping up production and creating jobs in the U.S.? That’s the famous question Robert Reich asked back in 1990 in a classic Harvard Business Review article.

The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph White updates Reich and asks “What Really Makes an American Car”?

Could there be a more American vehicle than a “Jeep Patriot?” Nothing on four wheels says American more proudly than Jeep, the rugged brand that helped America win World War II, and has ferried millions into our wild, Western spaces since.

Yes, in fact, there could be a more American SUV than a Jeep Patriot. A Toyota Sequoia would be one of them. The Sequoia is 80% “domestic” according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, while the Jeep Patriot is only 66%.

The Treasury has pumped billions into two of the three American car makers with head offices in and around Detroit, hoping to avoid a collapse of what industry and political leaders call the U.S. auto industry. There’s lots of talk about the government supporting American efforts to develop electric cars and batteries, and some federal programs already established to do this …

Once you put down the flags and shut off all the television ads with their Heartland, apple-pie America imagery, the truth of the car business is that it transcends national boundaries. A car or truck sold by a “Detroit” auto maker such as GM, Ford or Chrysler could be less American — as defined by the government’s standards for “domestic content” — than a car sold by Toyota, Honda or Nissan — all of which have substantial assembly and components operations in the U.S.

So what should you buy if you want to buy a truly American-made car? For the 2008 model year, the government says the Ford Crown Victoria has the highest percentage of U.S./Canada content at 90%. The only hitch: It’s assembled in Canada.