Roadrat, chronicle what's happened to the US auto makers over the last 30 years. They've been building up gargantuan pension and healthcare liabilities which are, and always have been, completely unsustainable. They were always destined to collapse, the credit crunch has precipitated this earlier, that's all. This problem has been brought about by myopic unionization. Its not been a case of pocketing huge profits and now bearing the consequences. That's not what's happened.
Maggie Thatcher crushed the unions here in the early 1980s before they crushed the country. That didn't happen in the US and since then they continued to destroy industry there like a cancer from the inside. You can complain about the management etc... but irrespective of what they did, they never stood a chance against a force as strong as the UAW.
This is not a reflection on Americans. They are extremely hard workers. You only need to look at plants like Subaru in Lafayette, Indiana to realize what's possible when Unions don't have a stranglehold.
Its extremely sad and we will ALL suffer from this. We may need to drive cars that are more green in the future, that's a matter of opinion, but that's a process that will come about through gradual evolution and as Ian says other pressures such as fuel prices etc... However if our wealth is hit so badly that we will be unable to replace our vehicles, that day will be much further away than it ordinarily would have been. Make no mistake, the demise of the auto industry will have a profound effect on the wealth of every single person in the developed world such is our reliance on it.
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