MSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry: Detroit Is What Happens When Government Is Too Small

No, they were performing their function on an assembly line. No input to the process, no input to the settings, no input to supply quality or quantity. Were there human errors? Of course. But these humans did not design the Pacer, Pinto, Monza. These humans did not decide to produce the Hummer, the Escalade, or the Excursion. These humans did not decide that paying off lawsuits was cheaper than fixing faulty cars. That was management.

 

I blame the people with the responsibility for failing in their responsibility.

If you go to Vegas and gamble is it the casino's fault that you blow your life savings?

 

Relax, I was just joking!

 

So you do blame the auto makers for not swatting down the unions with an iron fist.

 

They didn't design my Pontiac Phoenix either, but they did let it go out of the plant with a missing door handle, not enough anti freeze and an oil seal that wasn't installed right. People were buying the Escalade and Excursion, but they want it put together right.

 

There was failure on both sides, but you only want to acknowledge one side.

 

Inside Detroit's city government.

Bill Nojay: Lessons From a Front-Row Seat for Detroit's Dysfunction

 

Can you put that in the form of a question? Because as a mind reader you are total failure. I doubt seriously if you know what a true conservative is, especially if you vote republican expecting to get conservative results.

 

Melissa Harris-Perry is the Kim Kardashian of liberal politics. That she was unanimously denied an African-American Studies professorship by her African-American peers like Cornell West due to her complete lack of scholarship is a pretty good sign that she is not someone to be taken too seriously. She is an intellectual light-weight when it comes to these heady issues. She is better suited to be discussing the importance of hair for black women to the mostly white MSNBC audience than economics, urban decay, and the like.

 

After 1961, government on all levels got bigger, and Detroit sank like a stone.

 

I blame management for failing in their fiduciary duty to protect the interests of stockholders. If management had made the correct decisions the labor force would have become smaller, more skilled and labor would, as it has always done, adjusted to changing circumstances.

 

People make mistakes. In manufacturing it is called variance. So we fix the oil seal or replace the door handle at the dealer.

How do you fix the Monza? Pinto? Gremlin?

 

Please. Don't be rounded at the free end.

A union contract is for a set period of time. 1 year, 3 years, 5 years. Beyond the length of the contract there is no guarantee for the worker. No guarantee of a job, no guarantee of a contract. It is the duty of the union representatives to maximize the return for the people they represent for the length of the contract. The union did exactly what the union is supposed to do.

Management made the same decisions here that they made with the Pinto. Just as it was cheaper to pay off individual claims rather than fix the cars, it was cheaper to meet union demands rather than retool. In both cases management ended up being wrong.

 

You refuse to look at reality and try and put all the blame on management. Yes, the company put out some bad deigns on some of their vehicles. But many Americans complained of poorly assembled vehicles also. Vehicles that broke down a lot. But you keep wanting to ignore that part as if it never happened. Denying it doesn't change the fact that it happen all the time. Meeting union demands made it harder to retool. Retooling takes millions of dollars.

 

How does one vehicle come out of the factory with all three things wrong? There wasn't enough water/antifreeze in that new car to get it home from the dealership without stopping at the gas station to fill the radiator? At least 3 people had to have screwed up putting that car together and another who should have done the final inspection before it was pulled off the factory floor and parked on the lot.

 

I think I told you earlier that the Big Three conceded that they couldn't build a small car to compete with the imports and make money on them, because of the big advantages the imports had on them. They would have lost money trying.

 

Like I said...

 

So does paying quarterly bonuses to executives.

But only one of those decisions would have benefitted the company. Only one would have reduced variance in the assembly line. Guess which decision the executives made?

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Gee. Do you suppose the dealer should have inspected it?

 

For 30 years the Nissan Maxima was priced much higher than similar cars from the big three yet regularly nibble away at market share. Why is that?

Margin. Margins on big iron was big. Margins on compacts, small. Rather than build a better small car they chose to make marginal big iron. A short term decision aimed at meeting this quarter's sales numbers in order to get those quarterly bonuses.

Why, when the foreign makers started making trucks and SUVs did they start claiming share there as well?

Quality.

Quality, plain and simple. Planned obsolescence is what nearly killed the Us auto makers.