General Motors Layoffs

Those who have led the U.S. auto industry into decline are going to Japan to accompany President Bush on his diplomatic endeavors.

Those are the same types who have habitually rewarded themselves with huge multimillion-dollar bonuses while “garnering” lower and lower market share. It would seem that the President ought to be seeking out the winners in our capitalist system, not those down-sizing their businesses.

Why do we seek to extract, from Japan, Detroit’s failure to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car, write a manual in Japanese, and how many of our auto industry leaders speak “their” language? Why this frenzy to subsidize the inefficient? Isn’t the collapse of this kind of economic system in Eastern Europe a sufficient lesson?

ROBERT ARONOFF

South Pasadena