I was watching the The Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough this morning. He reported that President Elect Obama and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, are supporting a bailout for the auto industry. In return for the bailout, they are asking for production of more environmentally friendly cars that give us 40 mpg and fuel alternatives, such as electric and hydrogen.
A comment was made that the government shouldn’t have to impose such a requirement because if there was a demand for them, then the auto industry would have a need to build them. I just have one thing to say to the auto industry, “Shame on you, you greedy #@!%$#!(fill in your own expletives.)!
I have been purchasing cars for over 20 years. Never have I been able to afford to purchase the car that I want, just the car that fits into my budget. When I can afford the top-of-the-line car of my choice, it’s because it has had several owners previously and is on the way out. “It’s new to me” has been forever my slogan.
But through maturity, I realize that obtaining the important things in life are not without sacrifice. Global Warming for example;I want to do my part and help reduce my carbon emissions, so I needed to choose a car that will do just that. There are some vehicles out there that will help me on my quest. The Toyota Prius, for example, that gives the driver 48/45MPG and the Honda Civic Hybrid that gets an average of 45 MPG. All of the above have a starting price of $22,000.00 and up. When you finish with what you need, the price to drive it off the lot is usually around $30,000.00.
Last year my favorite gas guzzler, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, was destroyed in an accident. I loved that car because I paid $7,000.00 for it and I paid cash for it. So it was truly $7,000.00. I was the fourth owner, but I didn’t care because it afforded me all of the gadgets that I love in a top-of-the-line car (Yes, it was once a top-of-the-line car). But this car drove me around town getting 16MPG. So when I said good bye to it at the junk yard I decided to be more responsible and look for a car that did a better job at reducing my carbon footprint. However, the need to find a car that accomplish that, along with my need to purchase a car that I could afford, didn’t meet up. My compromise was a used Ford Escape that gives me an average of 22MPG. That’s not great by today’s standards of what is available, but it is what I could afford with financing.
So where does the question of need vs.demand leave the consumer? We need to have more fuel efficient cars that use forms of energy other than fossil fuels. We need, as a nation, to free ourselves from the grip of Foreign oil. We can demand all we want, but can we afford the cars that will be the answer? Most of Americans can’t.
One other comment on the Morning Joe program was that if the auto industry had spent the last 30 years focusing on cars that ran on alternative energy, then they would not be in this mess. By now, those car would be affordable to the everyday consumer and our dependency on foreign fuels would have been greatly reduced or even obsolete. It also made a point that if the auto industry used billions of dollars spent on their lobbyists that kept the industry in the structure that it is today, then their personal deficit wouldn’t be so great.
Now there is an ironic need for the government to step in and bail them out. For a group that has spent so much money on keeping the government out, just like the capitalists of Wall Street, they now are begging for our help. Well I support Speaker Pelosi and President Elect Obama in their requirement for the auto industry to manufacture more “Green Cars”. But I will also add one more contingency. For every cheap gas guzzler that they will still try to sell the impoverished consumer, they must have two “green” cars on the market at the same price point, so people like myself can afford to do our part at reducing our carbon footprint!
