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This may seem harsh, but I have to wonder if we have reached a point where the only way to "save" the automobile industry is to let the industry fail. These companies have too much invested in the status quo to be truly innovative, many have become little more than importers of components from China and Korea that then assemble these into "Made in USA" cars, and for the most part have only stayed in business by becoming financing companies that happened to use vehicles as collateral.
Liquidate the auto industry. Let those with money by up the profitable pieces and use them to create new factories focused on newer technologies and with newer mandates. The talented engineers, machinists and managers will find work elsewhere - indeed, maybe they'll start up their own car companies. GM and Ford are both hyperconglomerates as it stands, made up of the collective corpses of other automotive companies that were gobbled up to prevent competition ... I suspect that the next stage of American (and perhaps global) capitalism will be the great disintegration, as all of these conglomerates shed pieces of themselves to create fleeter, more agile companies.
It also raises the question of whether industry should become responsible for pensions and retirement. Seems to me that most of these companies set up pension plans only to take advantage of the money that it would bring in, and now that they are actually having to pay out those pension plans, they're filing for bankruptcy because the money is already gone.
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