It was announced last week that the GM plant in Moraine is closing. That sucking sound you hear is thousands of people fleeing the sinking ship of a city that’s been all but dead for years, kept alive only by the GM feeding tube. I could write an entire anthropological study about what the plant has meant to this city, having employed thousands of people, including 3 and 4 generations of entire families, since the 1950s. There is a “GM culture” here very similar to that of the coal mining families in Appalachia. It’s actually hard to describe the cloud of death hanging over everyone here, because even those of us who have no connection to GM at all will be affected.
Everyone wants to blame this problem on NAFTA, and specifically, Bill Clinton. But the truth is, that has nothing to do with it. The Dayton plant manufactures SUVs and large trucks, which no one can afford to buy anymore. The entire industry is (finally) beginning to shift toward hybrids and more environmentally friendly vehicles, which GM has dragged their feet on getting involved with for years. I actually think the skyrocketing gas prices we are experiencing might be the best thing that could have happened to our planet.
So foreign car manufacturers that produce smaller, compact cars and hybrids are making a killing while American manufacturers (GM and Ford) are going under, and somehow that’s NAFTA’s fault. Unfortunately, the folks who work at these plants are generally not educated enough to understand what’s really going on. It reinforces their hatred of anything not American, and keeps them from moving forward into the future.
The other factor in the demise of Dayton’s plant is their own greedy union. When you pay people $30 an hour to sweep the floor, it’s kind of hard to make a profit. Greed is really what it boils down to. A sense of entitlement that says, I’m entitled to make $30 an hour to sweep the floor, and I’m entitled to drive a gas guzzling Hummer simply because I want to. And when this nice little life gets slapped in the face with reality, I’ll blame the foreigners.
Well, that's the gloomy news from Dayton today.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Last one out of Dayton, please turn out the light....
Posted by Jennifer at 11:01 AM
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5 comments:
hmmmm...the GM plant here in Canada is closing too, and everybody is blaming NAFTA.
T'other day, I was importing some knives from the States to a show in Canada. They were made by "Colt". Hey, good US company right? I figured, "hey...they are made in the states right, so I won't have to pay duty on them! Buy American, thats what NAFTA is all about right?" So I did, and when I got them to the border, the border guards opened the shipment and we discovered that these knives were made in Taiwan. Doooh!
The deal with the cars is actually not NAFTA, but rather, the "auto-pact". As far as cars and trucks go, because of the autopact, there has been a "duty holiday" similar to NAFTA since the 1960's. The way it worked was that the duty on US made vehicles was killing GM, so they came up with a deal to allow factories to build with the whole North American market in mind instead of "just" the US, or "just" Canada. Bigger factories would be more profitable. The deal was that for every car made in the US that was shipped to Canada, a car made in Canada would be shipped to the US. This would balance out the duties, and allow the factories to be very big and very profitable.
This also prevented a lot of US jobs going to Canada, and of course, vice a versa.
So, the pain is shared both sides of the border. But it wasn't the tariff reductions that are the problem...they worked fine since '65. And NAFTA just doesn't apply!
http://canadianeconomy.gc.ca/english/economy/1965canada_us_auto_pact.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada-United_States_Automotive_Agreement
Your assessment is spot on. In this world you must adapt or die. The days of being an entitled American were (and I say were) very short.
There was only a small window of years when being an American meant that you somehow were immune from anything and entitled to anything else. My grandmother certainly didn't grow up that way.
We owe it to our children to make sure that they don't feel entitled. That they understand how to work, how to save, and how to stay out of debt. We need to re-learn the difference between need and want.
This is going to be a painful next few years as our population re-adjusts to reality.
In my grandmother's town (Yorkton Saskatchewan) there are almost no front yards. They are all dug into vegetable gardens, and have been that way since the dirty thirties. People from Yorkton are always surprised when they come into the "moneyed south" to find that we can actually afford to live without plowing our front and back yards into vegetable gardens, AND that (go figure!) it is actually illegal to do that around here! Back yard fine...do what you want, but the front yard is supposed to be just grass! Ha!
You should have seen the look on their faces when I told them that the city had finally decided to allow chickens in the back yard....a limit of three per lot! My relatives answer was "Only Three? How you get enough eggs eh?"
Its almost a pity that the old folks are all dying off now...and those unusually thrifty attitudes are seldom passed on to their blue ray driven Ipod wearing kids!
Stag, that is really interesting information about the Canadian auto pact. And I know what you mean about the strange attitudes regarding farming. I grew up on a farm out in the middle of nowhere. Now, living in suburbia, I find the mindset about such things very odd. My ex used to have a vegetable garden but I do not have the time or energy to tend it now being a single mom working full time. I wish I did, because there is nothing better than walking out to the backyard and collecting food for dinner. But I buy from the local farmers’ markets as much as possible.
CV, you are SO right about re-learning the difference between a want and a need. It kills me to hear people complain about the economy when they drive Blazers, have a TV in every room of the house, eat out every night, etc. The parking lot of the mall is packed every time I drive by. The sky is not falling…yet.
They will learn.
We have not yet even begun to see the bottom.
Just wait until the Chinese come into their own. They are starting to be an economic power, starting to become a nation of drivers. Wait till the majority of Chinese who can afford it have a car! The price of gas will get our fat asses on bikes then!
I just love how everyone is up their own ass now about being "Green" and how noble they are. It's just the ways of what frugal and poor people have always done.
Hang out your clothes
Have a garden
Home Canning
Sewing
Walk anywhere
Don't eat meat every meal
Skip a meal every now and again
Buy Used
Don't buy if you don't have to
Right now, all the SUV drivers here are buying all new hybrid cars, and their shiny smugness is just overpowering.
We're gonna start having Smug-alerts just like in South Park!
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