Re: Crunchy hypocrisy
[Rod Dreher  03/02 04:30 PM]

Reader Tom, a self-described paleocon, has Ricardo’s back:

I must register my support for your Michigan reader with respect to the American auto industry. My brother-in-law works for Ford, and is able to support my sister and their five Catholic (some home-schooled) children with what he makes working as a management employee at a Ford plant. As a result, my sister does not work, and many rank and file auto workers are also able to enjoy a decent standard of living with only one parent working, unlike in many other sectors of the American economy.

The notion that Toyota and other foreign companies with plants in America are making a comparable investment in our country is nonsense. As your Michigan correspondent noted, approximately $1200 per American car goes to pay for health care. As the New York Times reported last November, GM is the largest private purchaser of medical services in the US, and some 1,000,000 Americans depend on GM to pay their pensions and retiree health benefits. The Japanese carmakers aren't paying for 1,000,000 American retirees, and their profits are repatriated to Japan, where top management decisions are made and most of their engineering is still done.

If you believe that consumer purchases should reflect something more than selfishness, your second biggest consumer purchase (after your house) should be of an auto produced by an industry on which hundreds of thousands of Americans and large sections of America depend. The bankruptcy of Ford or GM would devastate the industrial Midwest, and cause large numbers of American retirees to lose their health care and pensions. There really is no offsetting consideration that would justify buying a Japanese car, if one accepts the premises of your brand of conservatism.