Why would anyone really think the government can run the auto industry? Why can’t I help but to think about this when I think of the car they might bring to market:
1959 Edsel
Or perhaps this?
Have you ever heard the story of the "people’s car?" When I first heard all the talk of Congress somehow running and/or managing the US automobile manufacturing industry, and that Chris Dodd and his comrades were publicly stating which private business employees should stay and which should go, I had to hit my library archives for a story of a similar (in some ways) happening some sixty-odd years ago. From William L Shirer’s "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich":
One particular swindle perpetrated by Hitler on the German workers deserves passing mention. This had to do with the Volkswagen (the "People’s Car")– a brainstorm of the Fuehrer himself. Every German, or at least every German workman, he said, should own an automobile, just as in the United States. Heretofore in this country where there was only one motorcar for every fifty persons (compared to one for every five in America) the workman had used a bicycle or public transportation to get about. Now Hitler decreed that a car should be built for him to sell for only 990 marks– $396 at the official rate of exchange. He himself, it was said, took a hand in the actual designing of the car, which was done under the supervision of the Austrian automobile engineer Dr. Ferdinand Porshe.
Followed by this:
Since private industry could not turn out an automobile for $396, Hitler ordered the State to build it and placed the Labor Front in charge of the project. Dr. Ley’s organization promptly set out in 1938 to build… "the biggest automobile factory in the world," with a capacity for turning out a million and a half cars a year– "more than Ford," the Nazi propagandists said.
See, just like now… Eliminate unwanted, greedy "management" and let the government-led effort join in cahoots with the unions. And here’s the part that only a Barney Frank or a Chris Dodd could love:
The Labor Front advanced fifty million marks in capital. But that was not the main financing. Dr. Ley’s ingenious plan was that the workers themselves should furnish the capital by means of what became known as a "pay before you get it" installment plan— five marks a week, or if a worker thought he could afford it, ten or fifteen marks a week. When 750 marks had been paid in, the buyer received an order number entitling him to a car as soon as it could be turned out.
Alas for the worker, not a single car was ever turned out for any customer during the Third Reich.
Tens of millions of marks were paid in by the German wage earners, not a pfennig of which was ever refunded.
You see, the Volkswagen plant was needed to make items for the war, instead, which had just gotten underway…
People don’t often think about this, but it is quite true: the "middle class" taxpayers ("workers") got completely hosed during the Nazi regime– which was, at the end of it all, an all encompassing, all-knowing government. A "car czar?" Please. even the name is scary…
