As I walk through the stores this holiday season there is one consistent fact.  Most of the merchandise was made in another country (not the United States).  Even clothing sold in high end stores was manufactured in another country.  My Dell desktop computer was made in China and my Dell laptop was made in Malaysia.  Tech service on those computers is provided in Bangalore, India.

Does patriotism trump our pocket books?   There is an article on the Los Angeles Times November 29 front page about the new Kia plant being built in West Point, Georgia.   The paper quotes one lady there that buying American, “is still a big deal.  But you can only be patriotic until you can’t afford it anymore.”  

Manufacturing continues to decline in the United States.  This contention is supported by the fact that union membership has fallen by 50% in the past 40 years.  In September 2001 the Commissioner of Bureau of Labor Statistics, Katharine G. Abraham presented a paper with the dismal fact that “Manufacturing employment fell by 141,000 in August” of 2001.  Manufacturing has continued its decline to the present.    

America’s largest corporations have continued to thrive and grow larger during the past 20 years as manufacturing employment has declined.  This situation is the result of the export of American manufacturing and jobs to lower cost nations.  With a new Democratic Party administration in the White House and strong Democrat presence in Congress this circumstance could change.  The problem is the lobbyists employed by big business.  

Congress may not be able to resist the temptations of the lobbyists but can always pass laws that induce employment in the United States.  That can be accomplished through tax incentives.  Lobbyists and corporations love incentives.  Now the public must demand that Congress do its job.

According to Allure Magazine, November 2008, 150 Gallons of spray-tan solution is used in just one season of Dancing with the Stars.  I still think Julianne Hough is both talented and gorgeous too.  In that same miscellaneous beauty data it was revealed that Richard Nixon refused makeup before his televised debate with John F. Kennedy.  I believe President Kennedy would have won anyway but we will never know.

There are arguments that H1-B visas are just another way to bring in low cost labor.  My one experience was a Marketing manager from Germany who was brought into this country because my employer claimed no one with his experience was available here.  His pay was well over $100K.  I was furious but he was unsuccessful in his job.  That really was too bad because the company needed an outstanding individual in that position.  The company went out of business due to poor sales.

Finally there is Billy Mays.  He is on most cable television networks hawking a variety of products.  He makes lots of money despite being very irritating.  Marketers don’t care just as long as he can keep selling everything at $19.99 plus shipping and handling.  I am a far better speaker in Toastmasters and I do use hand gestures.  Mr. Mays is a far better pitchman.

Darwin’s survival law applies to business too!

Without a plan to make the U.S. auto industry competitive, no amount of money will make the Big Three profitable.  Reuters reported that General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said “bankruptcies would have a devastating impact on the domestic economy, many times larger than the aid automakers seek.”  Perhaps he is correct in the short term but the management of all three Detroit auto makers have no vision for the future.  Everything they have introduced in their vehicles has been reactive to foreign competition.

They have built low quality gas guzzling cars and trucks that are everywhere.  Approximately 50% of the cars sold are still built by the American owned manufacturers.  A review of Consumers Reports indicates that the quality of their vehicles lags far behind the imports.  This is especially true when Detroit’s vehicles are compared to Honda, Nissan, and Toyota.  Those three Japanese manufacturers have made major inroads in U.S. sales despite their higher prices because their vehicles are economical to operate, have higher quality and provide longer life. 

I know this from personal experience.  I drive every car I have owned until the cost to repair it is very high.  No Big Three car I have ever owned lasted more than 100,000 miles.  I sold a Ford Fairmont (to a Ford lover) at 54,000 miles when it was literally falling apart.  All six of the Japanese imports have lasted at least 135,000 miles.  Currently our family still owns a 1990 Honda Accord with about 200,000 on the odometer and it still travels 60 miles a day.

The Big Three need to consider bankruptcy re-organization that includes new management.  The U.S. government is not in the business of investment in private enterprise.  

Thomas L. Friedman is one of my favorite columnists.  He is author of The World is Flat and Hot Flat and Crowded.  His ideas on fixing the auto industry are almost identical to mine. This column appeared in the New York Times and I have copied it here.  He is so correct when he points out that Steve Jobs would be the right man to fix G.M.  Congressional efforts to save the auto industry  may have to wait until Barack Obama is president.

How to Fix a Flat

Published: November 11, 2008

Last September, I was in a hotel room watching CNBC early one morning. They were interviewing Bob Nardelli, the C.E.O. of Chrysler, and he was explaining why the auto industry, at that time, needed $25 billion in loan guarantees. It wasn’t a bailout, he said. It was a way to enable the car companies to retool for innovation. I could not help but shout back at the TV screen: “We have to subsidize Detroit so that it will innovate? What business were you people in other than innovation?” If we give you another $25 billion, will you also do accounting?

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being more than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

And please, spare me the alligator tears about G.M.’s health care costs. Sure, they are outrageous. “But then why did G.M. refuse to lift a finger to support a national health care program when Hillary Clinton was pushing for it?” asks Dan Becker, a top environmental lobbyist.

Not every automaker is at death’s door. Look at this article that ran two weeks ago on autochannel.com: “ALLISTON, Ontario, Canada — Honda of Canada Mfg. officially opened its newest investment in Canada — a state-of-the art $154 million engine plant. The new facility will produce 200,000 fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines annually for Civic production in response to growing North American demand for vehicles that provide excellent fuel economy.”

The blame for this travesty not only belongs to the auto executives, but must be shared equally with the entire Michigan delegation in the House and Senate, virtually all of whom, year after year, voted however the Detroit automakers and unions instructed them to vote. That shielded General Motors, Ford and Chrysler from environmental concerns, mileage concerns and the full impact of global competition that could have forced Detroit to adapt long ago.

Indeed, if and when they do have to bury Detroit, I hope that all the current and past representatives and senators from Michigan have to serve as pallbearers. And no one has earned the “honor” of chief pallbearer more than the Michigan Representative John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who is more responsible for protecting Detroit to death than any single legislator.

O.K., now that I have all that off my chest, what do we do? I am as terrified as anyone of the domino effect on industry and workers if G.M. were to collapse. But if we are going to use taxpayer money to rescue Detroit, then it should be done along the lines proposed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday by Paul Ingrassia, a former Detroit bureau chief for that paper.

“In return for any direct government aid,” he wrote, “the board and the management [of G.M.] should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver — someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical — should have broad power to revamp G.M. with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible. That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others and downsizing the company … Giving G.M. a blank check — which the company and the United Auto Workers union badly want, and which Washington will be tempted to grant — would be an enormous mistake.”

I would add other conditions: Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol.

Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 12, 2008, on page A31 of the New York edition.