Now that the previously “unthinkable” has happened and two of America’s Big Three Automakers are in Bankruptcy, with GM’s behemoth filing now dwarfing the relatively simple Chrysler “shotgun marriage” with Fiat, or whomever, a thought dawned on me, and, I suspect, on many others as well. Is the history and fate of GM a metaphor for the history and fate of California?
The parallels are striking. I moved to the Golden State in the early 70’s from New England, as so many before and after me from all over the world, because I grew up believing California was the Promised Land. The Beach Boys, surfing (and ‘surfer girls’!), much of 60’s music, revolutions in culture, dress, lifestyle, and let’s not forget the weather – compared to New England, it was like dying and being re-born to actually be able to go to the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day in a T-Shirt, while my compatriots were back home were out shoveling snow and cursing their frozen windshields; something I had only dreamed about while growing up.
GM was the ultimate personification of American know-how, ingenuity, manufacturing dominance, and indeed, our dominance of the world throughout most of the 20th Century. GM re-tooled in 1941 to produce the machinery needed to win WWII in something like 90 days, and, when it was all over and the Boys Came Home, they re-tooled again, back to churning out the beloved cars we all grew up with – my Dad had a 1950 Chevy and my Mom, a 1952 Olds – both were like taking a ride in your living room – steady, unsinkable, real steel, real rubber, real wood – cars, like God meant them to be.
The 21st Century so far has seen both California and GM, incredibly, fall on the hardest of hard times. GM’s management set new milestones for arrogance, after first conspiring to put the Red Cars in LA (and public transportation in many cities) out of business and to put America on wheels, they ignored the foreign car invasion, particularly Japan’s cars, they ignored fuel economy, product safety, and competitiveness because What’s Good for General Bullmoose is Good for the USA. And now, the whole MidWest holds it breath to see just how bad it will be at Ground Zero – Detroit – and what the ripple effect will be on GM’s many suppliers, dealers, workers – both current and retired, and ultimately on consumers who will have to muster a lot of courage in order to even consider buying a new GM car or truck with this blizzard of Media Gloom & Doom bombarding us all with news of GM’s Bankruptcy.
California rose from humble beginnings and a small population of hardy pioneers to lead the nation in modernity – people flocked here from all over the globe, both legal and illegal immigrants, in droves. I have read that some 60 or 70% of all of American’s legal immigrants in the latter part of the 20th Century wound up in California, but, I cannot vouch for either statistic – however, it is rather obvious when you rub shoulders in Los Angeles, where I live, especially downtown, that many, many people whom you pass on the street did not start their lives here. California tackled every imaginable problem – smog, earthquakes, firestorms, riots, its own racism (either built into the legal system or endemic to the older populations), Prop 13 in 1978 to tame property taxes before they ate up your home and mine, a dazzling political spectrum, Charlie Manson and his zombie followers – you name it., California tackled it.
Now we find ourselves 8 and ½ years into this new century – a strange, at times frightening, incredibly challenging time with more problems than Carter (not the former Prez) used to have ‘Little Liver Pills.’ And, the common denominator is that both GM and California are now both dead broke, busted, out of dough, flat on their keester(s), running only on fumes, losing hope . . .
GM took the Bankruptcy route; as I have written here before, would that there was a Bankruptcy route for this formerly Golden State and its 35 or so million residents – it would solve many of our current financial knots and Catch-22’s, for sure. But, there isn’t and chances of there magically appearing a Bankruptcy remedy for California are likely ‘slim to none.’
Both GM and California need to re-tool, re-organize, and find their way through the thicket of this 21st Century madness. Michael Moore, of all people, for decades a bitter foe of GM and likely none too popular among readers of F&HD, recently had an Op-Ed piece suggesting that GM re-tool to produce bullet trains, mass transit vehicles for public use and alternative energy machinery, instead of its usual line of cars and trucks, and thus find itself again. California needs to find itself again too, and very quickly as time is running out on our financial clock, ticking away to oblivion. We must cut, cut and cut some more – expenses of all kinds must shrink just as the income tax and property tax pools have shrunk in the current financial meltdown. But, we must also pull our citizenry together somehow to face the current adversity and define meaning and purpose for all of our efforts. We need new leadership and we need fearlessly to re-examine a lot of cherished beliefs that just may have become irrelevant for today’s world. No Bankruptcy Judge is going to lead California out of this wilderness and Moses has not come back to lead his people either. It is up to us; you and me.