Are The Big Three Guilting You into Buying American?
Out in North East Ohio many assembly line employees at Chrysler owned facilities are in a panic. Sales are down BIG TIME and the final month of 2008 doesn’t look to be coming in as an upswing. Each month hundreds, sometimes thousands, are laid off or given notice that they will be by year’s end. It’s a hard time all over the place, and to combat this situation some local Ohio dealerships, perhaps in collusion with automotive companies, are using mostly blue collar employees in commercials to guilt you into buying American.
The ad I witnessed this morning was sponsored by a local Chevrolet dealer, and featured employees (or actors portraying employees) for said dealership as well as auto assembly line workers. Each takes a turn reminding us how bad the car industry in the Midwest is doing, and that every foreign car purchased within our borders makes this struggle even more insurmountable. They’re not lying, or even exaggerating – companies are losing money on the vehicles coming off plant lines as well as those still sitting in lots, unsellable in today’s economy.
We are not saying buy foreign, we are not saying buy American. Buy whatever type of vehicle you want, or (mor importantly) can afford.
But there’s something uneasy about using the struggling workers in this industry against us. It does grab attention, obviously, which is the purpose of any advertisement. But it sits uneasy when you think about those people and their lives, and the fact that you can’t help them – because like them you are no where near able to afford a new car. And why send the workers out to grovel, when your bosses are taking million-dollar jets to Congressional meetings to beg for billions. So we ask, is it fair that dealers or their parent companies use (possibly soon to be laid off) workers, who physically produce these vehicles, to tug at our wallets heartstrings and get us shopping on their lots or browsing dealership websites?
If you have some emotional need to buy an American-built car, get a Honda from their plant in Marysville, Ohio, or a Tesla, or any of the other cars being built by companies with competent management.
Bailing out the big three is nothing but throwing good money after bad. Those companies are wealth-destroying machines on a scale that we haven’t seen since the fall of the US Steel industry.