What do you make of this?

What do you make of an effort to punish strong union companies by buying from non-union ones?  Even if the non-union ones are foreign brands and the union ones largely domestic?

Mazda is union because Ford owned a big chunk of them at one time – do they still?  Mitsubishi was likewise tied in with Chrysler.

I have always bought domestic autos.  My siblings, they buy whatever, but I, like my father and grandfather, have always bought GM.  I’ve had good success with them……I’ve never had the lemon experience that ostensibly drove many away from domestic brands (although, I think there is a cultural preference that is the main driver, which makes domestic brands somehow less than chic and their buyers less than bright).  I’ve bought domestic brands to support American jobs, for one reason.  Foreign owned companies with assembly plants in the US do not employ the same number or caliber of workers as domestic companies. For one thing, almost all the engineering is done in the home country – Japan, Germany, Korea, etc.  Many suppliers are also overseas.  Although this is somewhat true now even for domestic brands, it is more true for overseas brands.  Nissan and other companies even ship large sub-assemblies of their autos to the US, with only final assembly done here.  So, foreign brands do not support nearly as many jobs as domestic ones.

I guess the question is, should I care anymore?  I actually have no interest in buying any foreign car, save for some types I could never afford like a BMW M3, which I will fully admit, is an amazing car.

I have no interest in supporting unions which donate 90+% of their copious political funds to democrats, who then enact laws that benefit unions and help perpetuate economic decline.  GM and Chrysler went under, and had to be bailed out, because of the profligate salaries and especially benefits provided to their union employees.  Does an unskilled assembly line worker really merit a six-figure salary?  Salaries are much lower and the foreign-owned, non-union plants, and they produce cars of equal or higher quality (but much of that is due to design, not necessarily assembly).

I don’t know.  It’s interesting to ponder.  But since I will likely only ever buy trucks (unless one of my readers loves me so much they’d like to drop $40k in my lap for a Boss 302 – but even that won’t work, my wife would abscond with it for a housing upgrade), and foreign brand pickups have never appealed to me, it’s unlikely I’ll change course.

But, who knows, with Obama’s re-election and the ridiculously high, nigh-unobtainable fleet mileage requirements the Environmental Extortion Protection Agency has set, there probably won’t be anything but 4-banger mini-trucks on the market in a few years, anyway.

Another factor – most of those non-union auto plants are in the conservative south, while most (but by no means all) domestic plants are in blue states.  More money for the left wing political machine.