An Indecent Proposal

Dear Congress,

I have a business proposal for your consideration. I plan to start a big company that produces products that people need and want, and that will allow me to employ hundreds of thousands of workers directly, and many more indirectly as my suppliers. This product will revolutionize the world we live in, allowing us to become more mobile and productive, and to generally increase our standards of living.

Sounds good so far right? Wait, there’s more. Once I am established, I will start producing products that people don’t really need anymore but I will spend lavishly on marketing to ensure them that they do want them, no, make that they need them to keep up with the times. I will make sure to negotiate contracts with my employers unions that are inflexible and offer benefits that I’m pretty sure in the long run I won’t be able to honor, but don’t worry because that’s where you come in, I’ll get to that later in my proposal. I will also hire a cadre of executives and pay them exorbitant salaries and bonuses, not to mention give them generous stock options because investors initially will bid up the price of my company, providing me with ample room to make mistakes in judgment. Think of this as the New York Yankees model, they can go out and spend 8 million dollars on a .260 hitting utility infielder because if it doesn’t work out, what the hell, they’re still rich and can waste money on someone else.

My products will be harmful to the environment, and will rely on a product that is generally provided, at a substantial cost, by dictators and other marginally democratic leaders of nations that are openly hostile towards us, thus providing a national security risk. I will get the nation addicted to this product, because without it they can’t use my product, and as I said before, my whole marketing campaign is designed to convince a gullible public that they can’t live without my product. In fact, my campaign will be so effective that it will actually impact where people live, and it will lead to a whole new model of urban development, or some might say lack thereof.

Now here is where you come in. Eventually I will be overtaken by foreign competitors, who are more nimble and efficient and actually produce a better product that people prefer to buy. I will hold them off for awhile with your help, as you will impose tariffs on them to make the cost of their products artificially higher for consumers, and when consumers nonetheless continue to buy the superior foreign product, together we will embark on a program to get people to feel guilty for not supporting American workers by buying my product. We won’t tell them that many tens of thousands of American workers are also employed by the competition, because that kind of ruins the narrative.

When this plan is not enough to keep the factory floors humming, I will steadfastly refuse to start producing more efficiently and more in line with what the market is demanding, because I can still make a tidy little profit for myself and my army of executives thanks to investors who will continue to subsidize my program, and that gullible public I mentioned previously will keep buying stuff they don‘t really need, at least until the easy credit spigot is turned off. When that happens, I will come to you, hat in hand, and ask you to give me the money I need to keep operations going until I can retool and become more efficient and effective, and to start producing a product that people would actually want to buy if they could get the credit to do so. Of course I won’t really do this, but that’s besides the point. I will sell this as saving American jobs, and then go one step further by framing this as saving an entire manufacturing industry, and an entire way of life, especially in the industrial heartland.

But here’s the best part, it’s not really your money, I’m simply asking you to exercise control of the taxpayers purse strings and to let a little bit spill out in my direction. Nobody will really even have to know, we can keep it our little secret, just as we have kept so many secrets from the public over so many years. A few annoying government watchdog types and kill joy fiscal conservatives will whine a little, but we are saving jobs here, protecting industry, looking out for investors, and oh yeah, the workers, it’s all about the workers, well, except for the 100,000 that have already lost their jobs due to my ineptitude and incompetence, but otherwise it’s about the workers. Almost forgot the best part, the real genius of the plan. We won’t dole out the cash all at once, lest that gain unwanted attention, but you will give it out in much smaller increments, say $25 billion at a time. When that doesn’t do the trick, and when my executives are starting to clamor for their next wave of fat bonus checks, we’ll just do another $25 billion. If you waste taxpayer money in smaller chunks people don’t seem to mind so much, call it the Iraq War funding model.

So you have my plan in front of you, and I would hope that you find it feasible and beneficial for the nation and for communities all across this great land. I will eagerly await your response, and in the meantime will be gathering as many donations as I can towards your next re-election campaign as I wait for my back to be scratched in return. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
The American Auto Industry