Signs of the times
Toyota substantially expanded production over the past decade or so, when demand was artificially increased by easy credit. I can’t help think that contributed to this announcement: an unprecedented eleven-day shutdown at its Japanese factories.
Because there’s too much global capacity for auto manufacturing to begin with, I have mixed feelings about the auto bailout. And I use “mixed feelings” as a euphemism for “negative feelings”. (That said, I’m incendiarily upset with the financial-sector bailout.)
I’m absolutely in favour of supporting affected workers and giving them every assistance to transition to new employment — that’s what a just society does. But money is better spent expanding emerging industries, than helping mature or declining ones.
I’d love to see those factories scooped up for pennies on the dollar by solar photovoltaic and wind turbine manufacturers. Money directed towards grid feed-in tariffs and subsidies would increase demand, allowing these companies to ramp-up production, and hire back many (hopefully most, even more hopefully all) of the employees.