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Mitt Romney's NY Times Op-Ed On the Automakers: Dead On

Too bad he didn't get the nomination. He's the president we need now. Someone who has some business understanding. And executive experience. A crisis isn't the time to be doing on the job training.

Well, we have what we have. Maybe he'll pull it out. So far he doesn't inspire much confidence. Business as usual. That's *Washington* business as usual.

Should We Really Bail Out the Big Three Automakers with $73.20 Per Hour Labor?

Our system was created after the war when there was no competition. Both labor and management worked that for all they were worth. Now there is competition, and they don't want to give up that system of privilege.

Our management compensation is way out of whack because our corporate governance is way out of whack. If you have the people skills to get to the CEO slot, are you going to put members on the board that won't give you exactly the pay you want? Yeah, sure you are.

Check out congress. They give themselves a non taxable income with a pay raise every year, 100% pay in retirement, 100% gold plated health coverage for life. Members of congress may disagree with each other on lots of things, but they agree on one thing: looking after members of congress. So we have a congressional governance issue as well as a corporate governance issue.

Unions did good in their time, but they are anachronisms in the workplace now. All of the good they forced has been taken over by the government. We're all union members now, the government is our union. Are there problems with union governance? There sure are. I've worked in union shops and what 'work at ford' says above is true. Too many workers, work to rule, no drive. I've spoken to people who worked at autoworkers during their hayday. People clocking in and then going to sleep in the warehouse for the rest of the day, etc.

What is happening is that we are competing, at all levels, with workers who are more desperate than we are. Both the illegals here who will live and work under conditions we would never tolerate, and with workers in places where people have too many babies they can't afford and are even more desperate than the illegals here.

And just like the union workers have taken it on the chin from that competition, the time is coming when the management workers will take it on the chin. Why pay someone who is so incompetent they cost their company billions of dollars exorbitant rates of pay when you can hire offshore workers that can't do any worse for 10% of the amount?

And as long as people in those third world countries don't limit their population growth so the desperation eases, there is nowhere to hide. It is going to happen. It is as assured as watching a tsunami wave sweep in towards shore.

The American way of life and standard of living was predicated on a lack of competition both in production and access to raw materials. That is now ending. And so our way of life has to end.

That doesn't mean we can't have a decent way of life, and a decent country. We still have a lot of innovation, of educated workers, of industry, and research. But it means there is no going back to the glory days where we lorded it over the world, and were able to indulge in excess.

Now, eventually the people in those places where they breed without restraint will get some clue and realize they don't like watching their children suffer, that they want to do right by their children, and will limit their population growth. At that point, among other good things that happen, the supply of labor becomes constrained again, and workers wages go up. Then there will be a boom that will make anything in history look like it was playacting. And all sorts of positive effects will occur; the end of war, and poverty, and hunger.

But that is a ways off yet. And we might not get there.