The Problem the Automakers Can't Solve

[car of my youthful dreams]

In a word, cars are too good now.

The Big Three bailout is so important that David Leonhardt’s column is page one news today in the NY Times (“$73 an Hour: Adding It Up”). Here’s the statement that grabbed my attention:

The real problem is that many people don’t want to buy the cars that Detroit makes.

It is true, and fascinating, that for some decades now, most of us have not acted in our own self-interest. Daily there is new evidence that our behavior, including spending and saving, is nudged by forces unseen. That fact does not surprise the ad agencies. They always sold cars on the basis of appeals to our fantasies of power and freedom and joy, of being someone by virtue of having the biggest, shiniest machine in the neighborhood.

Nevertheless, you couldn’t help but notice that your Honda or Toyota, decently maintained, would run reliably for a long, long time. That’s what a lot of people bought. And that’s what they’ll keep. This is going to add to the Detroit automakers’ problem. They won’t get me to buy a new car, even if they start making good cars, because I don’t need one. My Civic runs great. So does Tom’s Odyssey.

Need vs. want. We keep learning to distinguish. Those of us in the pre-Boomer generations can only be amused when columnists earnestly advise working people to pack lunch (that would be, those who still have work). This advice has been in the Times not once, but twice this week. It's a switch from their usual coverage of how to eat out cheap, that is, for less than $100. In a way, things are looking up.

Bail Out Gm! (Grandma, that is)

The poll is closed, the results are in. 57% of us voted to bail me out, and the rest wanted The Fed to bail them out, too. I'm waiting.

I hope nobody missed the news clip showing the CEOs of the Three Not-So-Big-As-We-Were-Before-the-Japanese-Lost-WWII being grilled (sorry) by our worthy legislators. One said to them something much like this:

It does seem ironic that you flew here in corporate jets with tin cups in your hands.

You could see the executives wishing they had not worn their very best yellow silk ties.

And here's a rhetorical question: Why did it take everyone else so long to get mad at the rich?

Bail Grandma Out!

Imagine my surprise when I found myself agreeing with Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. Today’s NY Times (“Chances Dwindle on Bailout Plan for Automakers”) says Henserling believes American automakers should bear responsibility for their failed operations. ‘"They are producing high-cost products that consumers don’t want to buy." He goes on to oversimplify, so I’ll stop here. Anyway, like everyone, I’m more interested in myself.

About myself: I am really, actually a Poet, a Vocation I didn’t choose and never would have chosen, given that, as the song goes, “Ain’t no money in poetry.” I capitalized Vocation to distinguish it from career, a word that always reminds me of careen, as when, “The car went careening off the cliff.”

I can’t help writing poetry. I have also written a great deal of fiction. Not one page of it involves the big D luxuries - diamonds, drug abuse, decadence. My stories are hardly even stories sometimes, since they are explorations of life itself, which does not have any discernible plot except the line drawn from “you’re born” to “you die.” They certainly are not entertainments.

It’s not that the arts communities have not recognized me; it’s just that there really ain’t hardly no money in art, unless you are really good at self-marketing, wheedle your way into the tight circles of nepotism, and get hit by a lightning stroke of sheer good luck

So I find myself here near life’s end without quite enough money to indulge my modest desires: a digital SLR camera, a new pair of sweats, weekly acupuncture treatments, the ability to go out for dinner with a friend and not worry about every dollar. Every penny. And it’s not my fault. I did work when I could, the kind of work a female English major can do. Unfortunately, my pension is based on the kind of salary a woman could make.

GM made stupid products out of sheer stubbornness and disregard for the health of the planet. They thought they could eternally trick consumers, even as Honda and Toyota were ascending stars. Gm (Grandma), on the other hand, has made unsaleable products because, well, I couldn’t help it. We artists are at least as helpless in the grip of our impulses as any frontier capitalist. Probably more.

Therefore it makes perfect sense that if anyone is bailed out, it should be me. And I’m a bargain. I can be bailed out with a single payment far less than the annual salary of one auto executive. And I promise, I will use the money to stimulate the local economy. That’s how generous I am.