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During these times of financial transition and change, the newest twist is that now the government is going to bail out the American auto industry.<\/p>\nDuring these times of financial transition and change, the newest twist is that now the government is going to bail out the American auto industry.<\/p>\n
I feel very strongly about this because I was raised buying American.\u00a0 I bought American-made cars only.\u00a0 My father was a Ford man. And I, from the very first car I\u2019d owned at age 15 have been a Chevy man.\u00a0 I\u2019d been a Chevy man for decades until I got sick and tired of buying inferior products that didn\u2019t last, and cost way too much.\u00a0 So I changed a couple years ago and I bough a Honda truck.\u00a0 And I love it.\u00a0 It\u2019s been great; 64,000 miles and still going strong.<\/p>\n
So I feel very strongly about this whole bailout issue.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bigger issue than Ford, or GM, or Chrysler in that it is an issue of how we look at life.\u00a0 So let me respond and give my take on what\u2019s gone wrong with our economy and why bailouts don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bailouts never address the core problem.<\/span> It\u2019s not that we\u2019re not driving cars and that cars aren\u2019t selling.\u00a0 I love my Honda and everyone else I know who loves a Honda, loves theirs.\u00a0 People who own Nissans and Toyotas and other types of cars love theirs.\u00a0 It\u2019s because they just work.\u00a0 It\u2019s the reason I buy Apple computers.\u00a0 They just work.\u00a0 So the bailout in the auto industry is to ignore the core issue: it\u2019s that they don\u2019t build superior products that people can take pride in owning anymore.<\/em> Ignore the core problem and cover it up only to deal with it at a later date when the price will be much higher.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bailouts reward suck-y service.<\/span> One of the delights of owning my Honda truck is the service I get.\u00a0 My dealership is Darrel Waltrip Honda here in Franklin, Tennessee.\u00a0 Not only can I take my truck in, I can wait for it to be serviced.\u00a0 They\u2019ll wash it for me for free.<\/em> They also provide a place for me to wait that has free Internet service, and coffee.\u00a0 The service people are actually nice.\u00a0 They meet me when I drive in.\u00a0 They don\u2019t just treat me <\/em>this way; they treat everyone <\/em>that way.\u00a0 Shift back to my experience when I owned American-made cars.\u00a0 I had to wait in line and the service people were rude, angry, and gruff, acting as though I had interrupted them.\u00a0 They were never on time and always too expensive.\u00a0 It was a nightmare experience that I hated.\u00a0 Getting my truck serviced today is a joy.\u00a0 That\u2019s just the truth.\u00a0 Bailouts reward suck-y service.<\/em><\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bailouts prop up products that have served their purpose and need to die. <\/span>We need better cars, more fuel-efficient cars.\u00a0 We don\u2019t owe the auto industry anything to buy these big, gas-guzzling behemoths that should have been replaced years ago knowing that this day would surely come.\u00a0 Bailouts reward bad leadership practices.\u00a0 At the end of the day it is about leadership and vision, and the courage to change.<\/em><\/p>\n 4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bailouts reward broken systems.<\/span> The American automotive industry is a broken system.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I mean.\u00a0 Management and labor are locked in a hopelessly adversarial relationship.\u00a0 When Saturn moved to Tennessee, it was an experiment in change where the unions and the management would work together.\u00a0 And guess what!\u00a0 It worked.\u00a0 It worked great until all the money started coming in and all of a sudden the unions seized the old confrontational conflict, seize-and-conquer control mentality.\u00a0 And nothing can grow in that kind of environment.<\/em><\/p>\n 5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bailouts discourage innovation. <\/span> Innovation is always painful and carries with it the risk and reward of failure.\u00a0 But let\u2019s just build the same old thing and shove it down people\u2019s throats instead of going through the hard work it takes to innovate.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bailouts cheat the future.<\/span> The future of the gas-guzzling automobile that lasts 40 \u2013 50,000 miles before needing major over-hauls that sends people into major debt over 5, 6, or even 7 years is dead.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the future. When any industry tries to hold onto an old paradigm that\u2019s not embraced anymore, it becomes parasitic.\u00a0 And instead of giving to culture and society, it\u2019s a taker.<\/p>\n Now I\u2019ll be the first to admit this has been harsh, but it\u2019s been a long time in coming.\u00a0 I loved my Chevrolets.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to be driving one today.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to return to that cool, fun, hip-factor that I had in those days when I bought a great product.\u00a0 But they\u2019re gone.\u00a0 And the way things are going now, they\u2019re probably gone forever.\u00a0 Bailouts aren\u2019t just about auto; they are about anything.\u00a0 Let\u2019s learn our lesson and move on to a bigger, brighter future instead of trying to continue to ride dead horses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During these times of financial transition and change, the newest twist is that now the government is going to bail out the American auto industry. I feel very strongly about this because I was raised buying American.\u00a0 I bought American-made cars only.\u00a0 My father was a Ford man. And I, from the very first car … Continue reading “Dave Rave – 6 Reasons Bailouts Don\u2019t Work”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}