If Bush and the ruling class were truly nationalists today's news of Toyota's car production supremacy would induce calls for a special session of Congress and retooling of Detroit, Youngstown, Cincinatti, Fort Wayne, etc...
But finance capital has the upper hand these days so we hear more about free trade and money markets than building things. This is not a call for state capitalism but a call for democratic planning and the re-building of urban areas in the US that have been destoyed by neo-liberalism.
2 comments:
"They assert US carmakers are being unfairly penalised by the Japanese government keeping the yen artificially low." So when are we going to wake up to the fact that there is no principal/principle upon which to base the charging of interest on a fiat money? Which is actually the cause of our inflation and job migration, and not the cause of Japanese low prices.
Inflation is miniscule. From a monetary perspective it ain't loose money but tight money. But I don't think this is the primary issue. The issue is that we have, from a government perspective, given up on the idea of planning and investment in strategic industries, except in war toys. This means we lose out on industries that can have high paying jobs for workers.
Japanese car makers, who are making more and more of their cars in other countries including the US, are actually beating the US out on quality. Even an expensive US car doesn't compare, particularly over time. Trucks on the other hand are pretty decent and consumers are willing to pay a little more because they know that they get what they pay for. Have you been in a US made sedan lately that compared with a Camry, Accord or Lexus?
By the way a good percentage of "US" cars aren't made in the US anyway.
And the healthcare issue...
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