In case you’ve been under a rock, allow me to inform you that General Motors was finally backed into a corner this afternoon and filed for bankruptcy, most certainly marking the end of an era and the next embossed chapter in the ever-expanding volume on American capitalism. To mark the occasion, filmmaker Michael Moore has written an on-cue goodbye letter to the company on his website, which he also blasted to email subscribers.
Now, say what you will about the hyperbolic Moore, but speaking as a former owner of a Pontiac, a Dodge, a Honda and a Toyota,I find little to disagree with in this paragraph:
It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
Just recently Moore announced a release date for his upcoming, as-of-yet untitled, documentary on the economic crisis. You can bet there will be plenty of talk about General Motors in there. Read the rest of the GM send-off at MichaelMoore.com.