Michael Moore Has Plans for GM
Step one is to stop building cars.
In “Goodbye, GM … by Michael Moore,” a letter published on June 1, the documentary film producer gives his insights on the collapse of GM and charts a future course for the automaker.
Before we visit this twilight zone, let’s be clear about why this filmmaker’s opinion matters, especially on this topic. Michael Moore is someone who “gets it,” according to the left. When his movies take on an issue — like gun violence, health care, or the U.S. response to 9/11 — it’s a cultural event for progressives from San Francisco to Vancouver. He writes the narrative.
He started his career in 1989 with Roger and Me. This film followed Moore’s quest to interview Roger Smith, the CEO of GM, to ask why the company was cutting jobs in Flint and building new plants in Mexico. Moore’s background as the son of a GM autoworker made the film even more credible for Democrats convinced of the darkness of free trade and globalization.
With this history, Moore should know something about GM and the domestic auto industry, right? But he begins his letter by laying the blame for GM’s failure squarely on management, for not building and selling the types of cars the American public wanted. That’s superficially correct, but hardly insightful. It’s like saying Obama won the election because he got more votes.
There’s a topic missing from his letter that Moore doesn’t get, or just would rather not address. That topic is the union, of course. Like the Democrats in Washington, Moore discusses GM’s past, present, and future without uttering the word.
GM failed because in the 80s and 90s the company’s unionized workers realized that the real money wasn’t in making automobiles, but in writing a better collective bargaining agreement. While Toyota’s workers were organizing quality circles, UAW workers were organizing work stoppages and press conferences. The consequences were predictable; the only surprise is that it took so long.
One of the best books on the auto industry competition is Womack’s The Machine That Changed The World. This management bestseller tells the story of how Toyota’s workers were able to build better autos not because of any single technological advance, but through a series of hundreds of small improvements over time. I believe we used to call that American ingenuity.
Yet in Moore’s world, the union workers could never be the villains. They are victims protecting themselves against exploitative management. They have no responsibilities to the company or its customers, just entitlements that grow larger and larger every year.
And Moore certainly doesn’t make the connection between GM’s bankruptcy and the proposed card check legislation that has the potential to unionize virtually every American workforce, an act of national economic seppuku that guarantees more bankruptcies, bailouts, and jobs moving overseas.
Like President Obama, Moore says that he has no interest in running a car company. His solution is to transform it into a nationalized transportation company — which he seems to be interested in managing — as evidenced by his nine-point plan. The new and improved company would build local and long-distance public transport using electric trains powered by renewable energy.
In this progressive fantasy, we all travel in style on GM-manufactured Japanese bullet trains that zip across the country at 165 mph. A trip from NYC to Miami would take a mere eleven hours. Sure, that’s eight more hours than a plane ride, but why save time when we can save the planet?
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Tristan Yates is a management and investment analyst and the author of Enhanced Indexing Strategies. His articles and research have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and many other publications.
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36 Comments
1. Ed Wallis:Sorta reminds me of the designs of cities by architect Paolo Soleri…looked great…only…just what sort of stranglehold government would be required to make such an entity run?!
Jun 10, 2009 - 2:14 am 2. nazz jones:“but the people who serve his lunch, do his laundry,”
One pictures a legion of domestic staff, exhausted and crushed under the weight of their responsibilities…
Jun 10, 2009 - 3:23 am 3. robert verdi:He is like a kid in a candy store, of course in the real world his constructivism fantasies never work and when they fail it is always blamed on the greed of others.
Jun 10, 2009 - 3:28 am 4. don:He is like a kid in a candy store who is a pig. Moore is as phony (grasping and selfish) as most of his “Socialist/Unionist” co travelers. As the union shop steward says, “don’t work too hard, you make everyone else look bad!!”
Jun 10, 2009 - 4:11 am 5. eon:Mikey Moore is an idiot, but at least he has a dim grasp of what GM (and Chrysler, FTM) is all about these days. In future, neither one will be a “car company”.
1. Car companies need dealers to sell their wares. Chrysler and GM are “downsizing” (bankrupting and closing) dealerships as fast as possible- by Presidential edict.
2. Yesterday, the new Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, said that the Government, which had promised to “stand behind” the warranties of Chrysler vehicles, will only do that for “new cars” starting with the next model year. This is an obvious incentive for the “car czar” to ensure that Chrysler builds as few new cars as possible. Essentially, I expect Chrysler’s “business model” to change from Ford (mass production) to Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg (a “coachbuilder” specializing in custom-built high-end toys for the elite’- like Moore- with a minimal mid-level semi-coachbuilt line for the upper middle class). (If you’re not “into” classic cars, Duesenbergs were custom-built like Lamborghinis; Auburns were the equivalent of LT-1 Corvettes.)
3. Car companies do not need dealers, or production of cars, if their primary responsibility is (as stated in the Chrysler “bailout”) to meet their “contractual obligations” to the UAW. Which means paying wages, paying pensions, paying medical, paying for the Dear Sirs and Brothers in the “Job Bank”, etc. In short, Chrysler (and, soon, GM) are both on their way to being what one columnist called “social-welfare program(s) with a money-losing manufacturing subdivision”.
4. The question arises, “How can these companies pay money to the UAW if they don’t make money by selling cars?” In a word, TARP. The Troubled Assets Rescue program, meaning taxpayers’ money, will be what the UAW is paid with. I strongly suspect that The One intends to transform Chrysler and GM into nothing but “holding companies”, in essence “false fronts”, whose sole purpose is to funnel TARP money to the UAW, in payment for “services rendered” in the last election and in anticipation of similar “services” in future.
5. The problem with this is, of course, “What happens when the TARP money runs out?” Or it would be, if The One believed it will. But He doesn’t. He thinks that he and his enablers in Congress can keep raising taxes, “monetizing debt”, and “creating” money forever- and claim with a straight face that they are “adding value” as they do.
No, it doesn’t work in the real world. But you are dealing with people who have never worked outside of academia, politics, and the media. They have little or no contact with reality outside of their endless cycle of lecture halls, campaign “war rooms”, newsrooms, and cocktail parties. Places where they never meet anyone who has an opinion different from their own. It is groupthink on a level never seen since the Vatican before the Lutheran Reformation. And it is likely to have even more serious consequences.
Now, as to Mikey’s own brainstorms (Yes, I did read his “letter”):
1. RE “bullet trains”; Compare and contrast, profit/loss conditions, NYC Transit System vs. San Francisco BART. Then compare both of the above to Amtrak and Conrail. Next, look at a world globe; compare the size of Japan and the UK, and their distribution of population/production centers, to the U.S.
Then ask yourself, “How can a system that is designed to operate profitably in countries smaller than the average American state, with population densities equivalent to a major American metroplex, operate even at the break-even level across an area and overall population densities only slightly different from Russia?”
Answer; It. Can’t.
Which is why such “mass transit” systems in the U.S. have always operated at a loss, and needed government (taxpayers’) subsidies. It’s called the “economy of scale”, and it cuts both ways. What works at the “micro” level (city transit) is rarely scalable to the “macro” level (long-range transport). Geography always trumps theory, Mikey.
2. If Mikey wants everything to be electric powered, the only way to generate the necessary power is; oil, coal, hydroelectric, or nuclear. All of which he opposes, especially nuclear. Wind and Sun, his two Holy of Holies, won’t cut it. Aside from their limitations (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow), Ohm’s Law dictates that low-amperage sources (like solar and wind) can’t send power over long lines without unacceptable loss. Physics trumps theory every time, too. (And don’t bother demanding that Congress repeal that law; it was set by a higher authority, and no appeal has worked for the last six and a half billion years.)
3. As for his plan to make everyone in farm country ride buses, will the farm produce (i.e. food from same) ride the bus, too? If not, how will it get to market? For that matter, how do you farm productively enough to feed a world population of 6.5 billion + (or even 300 million or so Americans, FTM) without mechanical farming systems?
If you say “animal draft”, you flunk; if horses and oxen could do it, the machinery would never have been developed. Modern farming is a child of the Industrial Revolution; if you try to go back to the “old ways”, you are guaranteed to end up with about three-fourths of humanity starving to death (consider Sub-Saharan Africa, notably Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia). Mikey might never have to worry about where his next meal is coming from; most of us would not be so lucky, I suspect. (And I’m speaking as a farm boy, born, raised, and living in a farm state; I’ve been there, done that, including using horses.)
As I said, Mikey is an idiot. But I would dearly love to see him get a post in The One’s administration where he could try to enact his “dreams”. He and The One deserve each other.
And when the roof fell in on both of them, the look on Mikey’s face would be priceless.
(Sorry for the length of this post, but some forms of idiocy cannot be refuted in brief.)
clear ether
eon
Jun 10, 2009 - 4:13 am 6. Erik:I enjoyed your article, but there’s an important missing piece here. It’s the fact that something very close to this has already been done. Remember Amtrak? That’s right, the railroad company that was nationalized and scarcely heard from again. We get faint reminders of railroad days every time we cross a railroad track with prominently displayed “Exempt” sign. I’d actually like to see more rail travel, but there’s always that pesky looming specter of government inefficiency. At any rate, I can’t wait to see those “O”-trak trains zipping across the country; filled to capacity on every trip with loyal, smiling subjects :p
Jun 10, 2009 - 4:21 am 7. Tony R:Michael Mooore is in the film industry so why doesn’t he just make a fantasy film where he is the much-loved king of a world that works in all the ways he dreams about?
That way he could then lock himself in his ivory tower watching constant re-runs of his dribbling nonsense while the rest of us get on with living our lives in the real world.
Jun 10, 2009 - 4:51 am 8. k. pablo:UAW has cooked the goose that laid the golden egg, and ate it with a side of Fava beans and a nice chianti.
Jun 10, 2009 - 4:57 am 9. Greg:Good insightful comment Eon.
Problem is that when the roof does collapse who will Mikie and Obama blame? They will never, ever, accept any blame themselves.
My guess is that they will find an external (or internal) source to blame. And the favorite scapegoat of the left is (and always has been) the Jews. And the ‘evil white man’ will be close behind.
Jun 10, 2009 - 5:33 am 10. Old Soldier:Well, they already stopped selling cars…
Jun 10, 2009 - 5:47 am 11. Butters Dad:Michael Moore should set an example for the rest of us and just start walking more. Judging by his girth, he could use a few jaunts around the block. Besides, I don’t think being fat is considered “green”.
Jun 10, 2009 - 5:54 am 12. Boots:Here in the progressive suburbia of a blue state, the future of mass transit is up & running, and fairly empty.
1) The suburban commuter trains run more or less on time, and carry people efficiently into/out of the downtown area. Best option by far of all public transport, IF you live near a train station and you can walk where you are going once you get downtown.
2)The downtown light rail/subway and city bus systems run on no particular schedule, and operate at a loss.
3)Then there are the suburban buses, ghost towns on wheels. More operating losses.
The Michael Moore Barack Obama transport system for the little people seems designed to emulate the worst aspects of what doesn’t work now, empty buses & trains carrying nobody at a huge public subsidy while providing jobs/benefits/bonuses/pensions for government workers and their relatives.
Jun 10, 2009 - 6:15 am 13. Fragmentarian:Baron Moore of Flint has spoken.
Jun 10, 2009 - 6:27 am 14. Flint Man:I knew this gas bag Michael Moore before he was “Michael Moore.” This was back in the days when he was still living in Flint, Michigan and running a radical newspaper “The Flint Voice” later known as “The Michigan Voice.”
I remember how he preached union solidarity. Support your hometown. Buy a Buick or at least be American Buy American was his mantra.
After spewing his pro-union, and “look at me looking out for the little guy” rhetoric, Mr. Hypocrite drove away in his Honda Accord.
Jun 10, 2009 - 6:37 am 15. ~Paules:The American automobile is more than just transportation; it’s a status symbol. As such the desire to own one cuts across all socio-economic groups. Whether it’s a pick-up in the country, an SUV in the suburbs, or a Volvo in the city, ownership satisfies a psychological need to be recognized. Socialist dreamers think Americans are just going to turn in their keys to satisfy a fantasy? Talk about overreach! Next from Hollywood: the story of two gay cowboys riding the range in their solar-powered golf cart. Yeehaw!
Jun 10, 2009 - 6:47 am 16. AThinkingPerson:Michael Moore is the current administration personified….big, bloated, full of himself and has the common sense of a 7/11 Slurpee.
Those that listen to him deserve what they get. The only problem is that they then try and regurgitate his fiction as fact to the rest of us. I await the influx of liberal loonie posters to tell us all how he’s “gotten it right before so this is why we should listen to him…”.
I vote for Michael Moore go into the heartland of the US where people are few and far between and towns consist of 10,000 people and tell them that they will now have to rely on mass transit. Shouldn’t take long for someone to laugh some sense into him.
Jun 10, 2009 - 6:56 am 17. JeffC...:What is it about leftists and rail? Is it a “that’s how the Europeans do it” thing?
And what is it about light rail? Phoenix just completed its light rail system. It’s a little electric train that runs mostly on the same streets as cars and buses. I’ve ridden on San Jose’s light rail. It’s a little electric train that runs mostly on the same streets as cars and buses.
Let’s face it–light rail is for liberal snobs who wouldn’t be caught dead riding buses with the riff-raff.
Jun 10, 2009 - 7:06 am 18. JED:If Moore can be happier in paying 60% taxes and stuffing his largess into a two seater electro tin can econo car on his way to the union run free clinic, then Moore is the merrier. He may have a place in the Obama hall of czars (15 to date) as a Hollywood Dept. of MiniTruth, and Spindoctor excellence in reality editing. He did get his wish in overturning GM.
Jun 10, 2009 - 7:19 am 19. Professor Guvinoff:How about a giant bridge between Florida and Cuba so a high speed train (no doubt christened “La Habanera del moor”) allows Mr. Moore to pay a weekly visit (subsidized of course) to his buddies in Havana, and get a free tooth cleaning with it?
Jun 10, 2009 - 8:36 am 20. Old Soldier:Boots: My town has a very popular bus service directly to Penn Station NYC. It’s run by a profitable private firm and is cheaper and faster than the competing NJ Transit trains.
Jun 10, 2009 - 8:43 am 21. Sigerson:EON’s reply number 3 re: “you are guaranteed to end up with about three-fourths of humanity starving to death”.
Jun 10, 2009 - 9:31 am 22. Bilgeman:That’s probably part of M.M’s plan. You all have forgotten that in M.M’s scenario, he, as well as all his Hollywood cohorts will be exempt from the burdens stacked on us “little people”.
Offers Mr. Moore:
” It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted,”
Really? I guess that GM was just GIVING away all those Trackers, Blazers, Trailblazers, Avalanches, crew-cab pick-ups, and mini-vans, right?
How cognitively dissonant can a person BE?
What’s the best-selling vehicle in America for something like 20 years’ running?…you KNOW this!
Of course, that market reality is invalidated and wiped clean from the mind of Moore because these vehicles emit greenhouse gases, and therefore are responsible for (what Moore obviously believes), global warming/climate change hokum.
These people are so bankrupt on so many levels that when the lights come on in the minds of the American public, the backlash against them will make last weeks’ Labour drubbing in the UK’s MEP elections look like a mild reproach.
Jun 10, 2009 - 9:40 am 23. JMD:I just finished reading Michael Moore’s letter on his website (painful as it was). Frankly, I’m amazed at how far he’s gotten in life with such little intellect. It was like reading a paper written by a college freshman. Every “fact” in the letter sounds like it’s pulled from an alamrist liberal website. I doubt he’s done any fact checking in his life. I would point out specific errors or dubious claims, but I would have to discuss just about every sentence he wrote.
On a related note, I was recently talking with a friend who had walked for 45 minutes to visit someone (he doesn’t own a car). I asked him if he ever takes the bus instead of walking. He said that he takes it occassionally in the winter when it’s cold and snowy, but the bus trip takes the same amount of time as walking. He’d rather save the dollar and get the exercise.
So much for public transportation.
Jun 10, 2009 - 10:02 am 24. JKB:Bloody inconvenient for Moore that a new study taking into account the full life-cycle emissions of various transportation modes has come out. They discovered that it is less carbony if you take a plane. Seems, once you take into account the manufacturing, infrastructure required, passenger loads and mile traveled, a train’s emission footprint is more than doubled.
If only people were poor this would be a lot easier.
Jun 10, 2009 - 10:21 am 25. Tristan Yates:Excellent comments, thank you. Michael Moore’s toy train fantasy is a pretty easy target obviously, but still fun to write.
eon: Great comment. Watching Moore working for the Obama administration and trying to build a national high-speed rail system with unionized labor and through the yards of environmentalists would be a great Ayn Rand parody idea. Is Roger working on any scripts?
Guvinoff: The Havana to Washington high-speed rail line would be perfect for bringing in Cuban doctors and administrators to help us with our new health care system.
JKB: Excellent link – I read that study right after I submitted the article. I’ve always wondered how riding a subway can be considered environmentally friendly behavior, when the system itself looks an awful lot like heavy industry.
The other new development was the London Underground strike – imagine spending billions dollars on a transport system only to have a bunch of disgruntled workers shut it down so they can get a wage increase – in the middle of a recession no less.
Jun 10, 2009 - 12:45 pm 26. Don:It’s curious how Mikey the Marxist is such a profitable capitalist film maker, to bad it hasn’t worked for GM: Maybe Mikey is so successful because he never hires from the wretched of the earth?
Jun 10, 2009 - 12:52 pm 27. "progressive"watch:Barak Obama has broke Chrysler and GM and he’s going to get Ford. He wants to make it so that we can’t supply our own military
Jun 10, 2009 - 1:32 pm 28. The UnPatriot:Just returned from a trip to Europe, France specifically. I have been riding the rails on the continent for a score plus years and can describe both the good and bad of them.
On this occasion, a scheduled train actually saved the day for me as I was required to make a day trip from Pergignan to Marseille. All other options were either too expensive or too inconvenient for all involved. The cost was fairly reasonable. And, actually the SNCF refunded me 23 euros (as opposed to charging me an extra 10) when I changed my return ticket to an earlier train. I do not know what level of subsidy the trains receive in France but I only assume it is significant. I am, nonetheless, amazed at how reasonably efficient and comfortable (particularly the TGVs) are.
Contrast that with even the first class Amtrak between NYC and Washington. The price is not exceptionally different but the quality of the ride is really unbelievable (in favor of Europe).
I, personally, would love the OPTION (I will still keep the car of my choice) of a working, reasonably priced train system in the US. For enumerable reasons, it just won’t work – especially if the folks like MM are placed in charge. If that happens the inefficiencies of that system will make both Amtrak and GM look like the Japanese Shinkansen in comparison.
– The UnPatriot
Jun 10, 2009 - 1:34 pm 29. myth buster:eon, one problem with your post: Ohm’s Law states that thermal losses are proportional to amperage squared, so a low amperage source is exactly what we want in order to send electricity over long distances. That’s why we use transformers to raise the voltage on power lines to 25,000 volts.
Jun 10, 2009 - 1:38 pm 30. myth buster:To be honest, Obama didn’t break GM or Chrysler; they were already broken. Obama did, however, seize control of them, and he is probably seeking to destroy Ford because he doesn’t control it.
Jun 10, 2009 - 1:40 pm 31. wayne:Two words – Soylent Green
Jun 10, 2009 - 3:30 pm 32. Banned by Huffpo:Michael Moore . . . didn’t he star in “Supersize Me” and stay fat? Wasn’t that the happy ending, he found fast-food, fell in love, and lived happily ever after?
(He) Sure looks like it.
Jun 10, 2009 - 7:19 pm 33. Amitabha Mukhopadhyay:It appears America is heading to a huge crisis from where it would be very difficult to come out. Five years down the line American economy would be a much smaller one with permanent unemployment to great chunk of its working population. All these happened because of wrong and romantic approach to problems that could easily be solved with conventional method.
Jun 10, 2009 - 9:44 pm 34. Proud Infidel:First GM went for bankruptcy because the cars it made and sold could not justify the type of compemnsation it paid to its employees. But the present approach to downsize it for making electric cars would be remembered as a towering mistake in the years to come. People in general would not go for buying high priced, limited mileage electric cars for many many years to come.
Regarding bullet trains it would remain a handicapped project for all the years to come. The huge landmass with widely scattered and low population density would not make the bullet train venture a success for many decades to come.
America would do better if it would stick to the way it was doing earlier with only incremental changes in all spheres of economic activities. The twenty million Americans who have lost their jobs because of delay in helping banks and other companies in a serious and compassionate way- well it would be extremely difficult for those unfortunate Americans to get back their jobs.
All these madness of climate change is wrong as actually the world temperature and sea level are going down. For a glimpse into the world of future transportation please visit the website http://www.eloquentbooks.com/MegalopolisOne2080AD.html
The Michael Moores of the world will guarantee the following: Small, uncomfortable, under-powered, over-priced, unsafe, politically correct Obamamobiles and Goremobiles that no one will want or buy. I thought one of Fat Mike’s criticisms of GM was that they have made the wrong vehicles for years. So forcing the government and UAW-owned GM and Chrysler to manufacture more cars that no one wants will solve what? GM and Chrysler will prove to be nothing but endless money-holes for taxpayers until such time as the government/UAW butt out!!
Jun 11, 2009 - 7:13 am 35. Joe Bison:Just remember that state control socialists
such as Moore see things as enhancing central
control or not. As morally superior beings
they know what is best for you.
Automobiles-personal freedom of mobility choice
and free enterprise-bad
Guns in private hands-possible challenge to
state authority and dictates in the future-
very very bad
Abortion/Gay issues-destroy traditional
Christianity as a moral competitor to the
state-good for now
Powerful unions-undermine free enterprise-
good for now(will deal with later-remember
no real competitors to central authority)
The latter day Soviet Union is where control
Jun 11, 2009 - 8:23 am 36. vivo:freaks(never met a Marxist that wasn’t) want
to put you. But this time with better people
in control, Moore for example, things will
turn out right this time. Sounds like a
good gamble doesn’t it? What’s the worst that
could happen? As an ideologist with no
experience Moore sounds totally qualified.
The problem with the auto industry is that if you build what people want you may be building the wrong things. You need to be flexible and quick to correct your mistakes. That’s no easy task for such a complex business.
One of the solutions is smart engineering design. People are going to buy the best available design. Look at computers. They get better all the time and you don’t go asking people about what’s best, you design it, look at Apple.
The brain power is there, what we need is leadership and great management. Do they teach that in school?
Jun 12, 2009 - 3:34 am