Just after halftime, the automaker Chrysler aired a two-minute spot during this year’s Super Bowl. Considering this same automaker took a considerable government bail-out package and was later bought by Fiat, an almost $14 million dollar advertisement is risky at best. What made this advertisement particularly interesting was the narration done by a mostly hidden Clint Eastwood. The message is a rallying call for America and its blue collar, entrepreneurial spirit.
Is Detroit in a better place economically than the recent past? Probably so. Has Detroit seen better in the distant past? Probably so. The reality is that the government loans and restructuring allowed the auto manufacturers to shed the legacy of liabilities from its glory days. Workers were cut and in some cases re-hired at a fraction of the former pay. Pensions were slashed. Unions were forced to reset their demands. Sure the companies have mostly survived but at a considerable cost. A cost which has been borne the very people who lacked the opportunity to pursuade or make those decisions.
Chrysler’s advertising department should be commended for capturing the American spirit of capitalism. The company, perhaps the nation, is in the wrong fight. Manufacturing factories and jobs in the United States, whose products and processes are easily replicated, are in a battle that has already been decided. Those novelties have and will continue to leap toward economies with plenty of unskilled, cheap labor.
The true challenge and question is where do the new “factories” and jobs come from to fuel the next economy. The tech industries do not require the same scale in human capital as the traditional ones. Google, for instance, employees around 33,000 while post bail-out Chrysler still employees around 52,000. Yet Google and other technologies say they are struggling to find adequate amounts of qualified workers and, in a true bit of irony, are hiring from some of the same countries who originally took our manufacturing.
Hopefully, America can hone its entrepreneurial spirit to learn how to wield a mouse (or whatever is next) instead of a hammer.
“This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.”
What’s your take? Do you believe in a manufacturing Detroit or a new Detroit?
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