Big Labor Drove Detroit Over a Cliff

The Investors Business Daily agree that union avarice and greed drove Detroit over a cliff:

The fundamental transformation of Detroit is  complete, as socialism’s theme park succumbs to government run amok, a reminder  that government isn’t the solution to our problems but their cause.

The wisdom of President Reagan’s words have been lost under an administration  that believes government is the entity from which all blessings flow. So has  Margaret Thatcher’s observation that the problem with socialism is that  eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Last Oct. 13, President Obama boasted in a weekly address about the  bailed-out auto industry that, “We refused to throw in the towel and do nothing.  We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. I bet on American workers and American  ingenuity, and three years later that bet is paying off in a big way.”

Less than a year later, the American auto industry is indeed surviving,  bolstered largely by a Ford that refused government assistance and foreign  transplants located in right-to-work states. Even General Motors has been forced  to pay the free market some lip service, lest its customers go elsewhere, even  as it accepts Chevy Volt subsidies.

Detroit, however, is dead, and unions and government killed it. Michigan  recently became a right-to-work state, but it was too late to save a city that  had become beholden to unions. As the United Auto Workers helped destroy the  auto industry in and around Detroit, it’s no accident that Mercedes-Benz decided  to build its flagship SUV in a shiny new facility in Vance, Ala.