American Cars vs. Foreign Cars

With all recent news about how the American car companies are having financial trouble, I'm wondering why Americans don't like American cars? Some might say it's the quality, others might say the price. But I wonder, would we buy them even if they were the same quality and price? Is it possible that we simply don't think very highly of our workers?

For some reason, we seem to have the idea that foreigh cars are somehow better or cheaper. We apparently feel that American workers are simply not capable of producing a quality car. Since foreign companies (read Asian) workers are better taken care of by their companies than our workers, perhaps they are motivated to do quality work. Do we feel that because of our unions, our workers don't care, so they take no pride in their work, and hence no quality? Or maybe it's because they feel they get such a bad deal from the companies they work for that they simply don't care?

Maybe management needs to rethink how workers are treated. Maybe the unions need to rethink how they protect workers.

As far as cost is concerned, we've said for many years that our costs are higher becuase of government regulations. However, I believe the government also regulates the foreign cars that are imported, so that might not be true. I'd guess that the cost of health care benefits has a lot to do with the costs passed on to the consumer, though.

As a side note, it seems we also think anything European is better (classier?), otherwise why would so many people try to emulate the European accents? Are we really a lower class than Europeans? Why not just be ourselves.