Dear Virginia: Why Santa can’t bail out the auto industry
November 18th, 2008 at 02:29pm Georgette Braun
Dear Virginia:
You’ve asked why can’t Santa bail out the auto industry.
Being such a smart 8-year-old, you already know that Santa has said he’ll bail out the banks.
So let me tell you the difference between the auto industry and the banking industry, and why Santa’s helpers (we call them “legislators”) are having a tough time giving a bag of money to carmakers.
It comes down to what the good little girls and boys in the United States are thinking.
The good little girls and boys can’t put a bad-man face on the banks, like they can with the Big Three automakers. There are just too many banks, all with somebody in charge, that are having trouble. And they don’t know those people like they know the name of Robert Lutz. He’s in charge at General Motors, the big American carmaker, and he used to be a big wig at Chrysler, the littlest of the U.S. carmakers.
Plus, while the good little girls and boys around here know that bank presidents make a lot of money, they know that the tellers and the clerks they see when they go to the bank don’t.
That’s different with the carmakers. Good little girls and boys who know someone who works at a car factory know they make a lot of money compared with what many of their other friends are making.
So, Santa’s helpers can’t very well tell all of us that they’re going to give money to your neighbor, who makes more money than your parents, but your parents aren’t going to get any.
That’s not fair, is it Virginia?
Entry Filed under: economy
6 Comments Add your own
1. hokumboy | November 18th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
“So, Santa’s helpers can’t very well tell all of us that they’re going to give money to your neighbor, who makes more money than your parents, but your parents aren’t going to get any.”
Are you saying the folks at the auto plants don’t earn their money? That the workers don’t deserve a decent wage. It really gets tiring hearing all the desk jockeys on this paper, who’s closest association with occupational danger or injury is a paper cut, complain about how much money people who LABOR for their wages earn. Spend a week on the assembly line, construction site, in a sewer, on a road crew, carrying mail through snowdrifts on an unshoveld walk, up on a high line in a rainstorm, or on a roof in 90º weather, and then tell me that they make too much money.
So, by your logic it’s OK to give money to bankers and stock brokers, who also never seem to moil in the muck? Strangers who make more money than our parents?
2. Georgette Braun | November 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Hokum: I’m saying that the folks in the auto industry make a comparatively pretty dollar. And I have spent summers on assembly lines, where I was paid a third of what was being paid at the car plants.
My son works on high lines in mud and rainstorms, and THAT is a tough job, with commensurate wages to the workers on the carmaking assembly line.
I’m just saying that impressions count. And when we can’t put a face on something, we don’t understand it as well. And when we’ve worked as hard as the guys at the car factories over the years and they haven’t worried about us not having enough money to buy new motorcycles and cars, well, what goes around comes around.
3. hokumboy | November 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Then, explain to me why the policy of this paper from the publisher to the columnist has always beento contantly berate worth of Unions and Union Men and Women. They’ve worked (and work) hard, and even died, to attain what shrinking benefits they do have. And yet your, and your paper’s, attitude is always, “My neighbor makes too much money”.
4. Georgette Braun | November 18th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Hokum: I can’t speak for the paper. Many in my family are sheet metal, cement, siding, construction workers. And I do support those who work hard for their money.
5. hokumboy | November 18th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Your initial post didn’t show it. Not in the least.
6. Georgette Braun | November 18th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Hokum: The issues are fairness and perception.
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