That General Motors is laying off
29,000 workers is horrendous, even terrifying news.
That stalwart example of American
industrial might is almost belly-up having lost its muscle and having been
muscled out of the leadership by the Japanese, Koreans, Ford, Chrysler, and its
own torpor.
Charlie Wilson, once president of
General Motors, demoted to Chairman of the Department of Defense under
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was chastised for stating “What’s good for
General Motors is good for the country.”
He was right. But the corollary is also
true and what is bad for General Motors is bad for the country. The shrinkage of our production base is bad
for our economy. The loss of 29,000 jobs and the dislocation of 29,000
Americans is tragic. But maybe here’s a lesson here. Maybe the country is
suffering an automobile glut.
We have mismanaged our lives to the
extent that the automobile has become not only a cult and religion but a
necessity. We seem gladly to suffer 50,000 deaths annually and 10 times that in casualties. We pollute
our atmosphere with lead and carbon monoxide. Too many of us often spend three
or four hours daily just commuting to wok.
Helicopters take to the air to offer
logistical support to hapless drivers, to funnel them into the least congested
roadways used to stuff them into large adjacent cities. Bridges are
strained by the load and often develop a
harmonic vibration synchronous with the surge of the auto pack. We have paved
our land, our farms, our playgrounds. We have decimated the country-side with
autos. We send out children hurtling down turnpikes and freeways at speeds that
only the most daring racers achieved in earlier days. We’re crazy. We keep our
kids out of football for fear of injury, but let them drive the freeways where
morbidity is greater and the mortality is unacceptable.
The Surgeon General has yet to put his
stamp of disapproval on the automobile, and although Ralph Nader tries to make
them safer the SG concentrates on medications as the dangerous elements in
society.
There is one man, however, who is
carrying out an intense campaign against the automobile. Ralph Slovenko,
professor of Law and psychiatry at Wayne State University in Detroit, detests
the automobile and the driving habit. He says that Americans are auto junkies
and that having to drive is as inevitable as a bowel movement.
Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to build a
mile-high skyscraper to house all he people in a city and preserve the
countryside for food, beauty and recreation. Slovenko decries the loss of public
transportation. So do the grid-locked Americans supposedly on their way to or
fro work.
The car has become so much a habit that
being without one strands the suburbanite, as if shipwrecked on a desert
island. We see and hear of auto tragedy daily. We smell the pollution and get
caught in is vapors. Yet there seems to be something sacrosanct abbot the car
and we are reminded daily how much the economy depends on it.
Well, the unemployed automakers might
be happy to find jobs on the railroad or laying trolley tracks. Maybe we should
consider rebuilding the country -- from the inside out.
President Reagan wants the Sandinistas
routed. Fine. Let’s ship them our cars. They will supply the drivers.