““It is a fact that today steel can be made more cheaply outside America. This is also true of many other products: shoes, shirts, toys, and so on. Cars are different—Detroit’s prosperity plummeted because auto executives made bad decisions and overpaid their workers. Consequently others figured out how to make cars better and more cheaply not only in Korea and Japan, but also in other states like North Carolina. There is unintentional comedy today in watching Michael Moore’s film Roger and Me, in which Moore chases around the head of General Motors to find out why he closed the Flint, Michigan, plant in which Moore’s father used to work. Moore thinks that the plant was closed because greedy bosses like Roger Smith wanted to keep more profits. He fails to mention that unions, like the one his dad belonged to, pressured GM to raise wages so high that GM cars just cost too much. Hardly anyone wanted to buy mediocre cars that were so expensive. Either GM had to keep losing market share, or figure out how to make cars more cheaply. So if Moore wanted to find the greedy fellows who caused the Flint plant to close, he should have started by interviewing his dad.””
