GM and Them

If you let them do it to you
You've got yourself to blame
It's you who feels the pain
It's you who feels ashamed
--The Who

Classic example of government intervention gone awry. When GM wanted to build a Cadillac plant that would straddle Detroit and the municipality of Hamtramck in the early 1980s, it approached local government for help in clearing out local residences.

Politicians were happy to oblige in the name of 'jobs' (read: votes). They wound up evicting protesting residents of Poletown to make way for the factory.

Det-Ham went down as one of the biggest disasters in facility layout and automation gone awry. Today it operates at a fraction of original capacity, and is tooling up for a big bet on the hybrid Chevy Volt.

Government intervenes in the name of big business. Big business bombs but persists. Citizens get hosed. Sound familiar?

btw, a picture of GMs Michigan area capacity, then and now.

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