[The Antiyuppie]

“One need look no further than the crap quality of the cars being built in Detroit in the 70’s and 80’s. I suspect the work force at that time was better educated and disciplined, what an unmitigated disaster it would be now.”

No matter how hard the factory workers work and how carefully they assemble products, they can’t magically make a bad design “good”. I think there is plenty of blame to go around from the management down. Note the recent feeble attempt in GM leaking that the ignition switches involved in recent recalls were made in China. GM engineers designed them. GM QC people accepted them.

[cripplecreek]

I used to make inside door panels for Cadillacs. They were crap because they were designed that way. There are plenty of things unions can be blamed for but quality of products isn’t really one of them.

[cripplecreek]

The “free stuff” spigot needs to be turned off - but very slowly, over years, maybe decades.

In a sense that's exactly what's happening in Detroit right now. While FReepers have no interest in doing anything, the MI GOP is doing what needs to be done. Unfortunately without reasonable conservative input it will be typical GOPe fixes rather than free market conservative fixes that create and encourage conservatism.