It concerns me that we've built a large part of our middle class on overpaying people to do simple jobs. When I look at what our mechanics have to know, plus what they spend on tools I wonder why anyone wants to do it for what they are paid compared to folks right across town who put on a part or two and have little knowledge or responsibilty.
It was mostly built on trade surpluses after WWII. Products/labor was in demand when a world is blown to crap and reduced to rubble. We reached some saturation point where the ingress slowed. We then ended the Fair Trade Laws to keep $$ flowing where they had slowed. We've been making a semi-controlled re-entry into normalized economic realties since then. Most of our heavy industries have gone. The auto industry is the last bastian of manufacturing that we have left. You'll note that it is the "most brokered" industry - basically somewhat converting it to a (sorta) service industry. Filters from Israel, parts from Mexico, some assemblies in Canada ..etc..etc. One decrement at a time. The late 80's-90's killed any of the midsized manufacturing. Why have a domestic manufacturer that produced 3% profit when the same investment in the market yielded 30-50% via everyone's 401k having to get in on the party. The party was over ..but the damage was done.
We can say this or that about the cause of these failures ..but the damage of them not being what they were - good or bad ..is going to take its toll on the "trickle sideways" and revert it to a "trickle down" type. It all depends on where you want your sustaining incomes injected into the economy ...at what level the regenerative cycle flows. Most of the domestic iron has been operating on debt and consumer credit to fuel the machinery. As that erodes from other influences (down cycling of other sectors of the labor pool) there is no ability to extend this years profits on future money.
They'll reorganize, en mass (or closely follow each other), and the shockwave will be more profound then the Japanese invasion during the Reagan administration. A bunch of Lansing MI.
It's been a privately administered government jobs program for a few decades. Laws/regulations were contoured to promote the assembly of large, profit/material intensive SUV (exemptions from CAFE for all but a few years) in an attempt to "fuel the machine". This can no longer be susstained.
But instead of a true controlled landing ..we'll have catostophic failures ..with the costs/impacts being substantial and severe and carried by all of us. You'll have all kinds of "experts" pointing to various aspects of this and that that led to this/these events ..all quoting facts ...but never truly describing the real picture.
Delphi, Bethlem Steel, etc. are just the conditioning that the public needs to expect and accept this sorta thing as common place in todays domestic economy. It makes the collision easier to take. Normally, I'd expect some type of economic stimuli to occur as these giants reorganize. Last time it was the "shop til you drop" crowd that masked the impact of our jobs marching off shore like lemmings to the sea. We didn't really notice the loss until the shop til you drop crowd ran out of steam/credit and the whole economy realigned itself.
I don't think that they'll be able to pull that off this time.
What ever did this has been promoted, fostered, and protected by everyone who got mileage out of it. Don't blame the prolls. They did no more then they were allowed to do.