As Detroit descends upon Capitol Hill desperately seeking a handout to rescue the flailing automotive industry, we must consider redefining the American dream.
Let’s be honest — does any child in our country grow up aspiring to be underpaid and overworked as a union member slaving away for one of the Big Three automakers?
The notion of the American dream is so amorphous, even for those struggling in the 313, as we live in a land where anything and everything is within the realm of possibility.
Instead of Congress opening its coffers to the greedy and manipulative failures that have driven the automotive industry into the ground, funds must be allocated to the workers who will be most negatively affected by the sector’s demise.
I am not talking about handing out checks a la Hurricane Katrina so workers can go on alcohol–fueled gambling binges in Vegas but rather so they can secure their financial futures and prepare for a career–transition.
American cars of yesteryear were nothing short of engineering excellence. Wax nostalgic for a second, and conjure images of the Camaro and Mustang in their heyday — the embodiment of American muscle. All red–blooded American teens worked two part–time jobs with hopes that, one day, they could be the envy of the neighborhood, too.
Such exhilaration and attachment evoked by these vehicles no longer exists, as the current Mustang sorely lacks the punch of its predecessors and a new Camaro hasn’t graced the pavement since 2002.
We can no longer kid ourselves into believing that the Ford Taurus is a viable alternative to the Toyota Camry or that the Chevy Aveo garners the same credibility on the street as the Honda Civic.
Rather than continuing to make a mediocre product for a higher cost than our foreign competitors, we must embrace the idea that the best course of the American automotive industry is to admit defeat and reallocate energies elsewhere.
What would a huge bailout package do for the industry other than delay the inevitable — another day in Washington a few years down the road asking for another handout?
Let’s fairly assume for a second that many of the people who are working in Detroit car plants would rather be doing something else if given the opportunity.
There is a laundry list of reasons why these workers ended up in their profession: They may have been too poor to attend college, forced to work to support their family or grown up in an environment where no other option seemed viable.
Giving the auto workers funds necessary to advance themselves through education would be a resoundingly wise decision by Congress. This second chance at the American dream would open up doors that never would have existed for many of these people.
If the government decides to aimlessly donate billions of dollars to the leaders of the auto industry, it might as well leave it in an unmarked brown bag on a Detroit park bench and hope to find it there the next day.
Our country cannot be so quick to blindly hand out money without a calculated plan for success in hand. We must rethink the distribution of funds to help those with the highest stakes. The death of the automotive industry cannot mean the demise of the American dream.
The future for more than a million people lies in the balance pending Washington’s decisions. A continued reliance on the quid pro quo nature of doing business in D.C. will spell nothing short of disaster for the masses in our nation.
Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.
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