Manufacturing a huge problem

Re “The end of the road for U.S. carmakers?” Oct. 28

Yes, there are pundits out there who are amazingly blase about the possible demise of the American automobile industry.

But think for a minute. There would be an incredible loss of jobs at GM, Chrysler, Ford and many subsidiary industries -- a loss that would affect friends, neighbors, relatives and the nation’s economic base.

What does the potential loss of the industry say about us as a nation?

It says: We are incompetent business managers; we have lost our manufacturing know-how; we are losing our engineering capabilities; we are no longer innovative or creative; we are no longer a “can do” nation; we can no longer compete.

We talk about this being the information age, but once we lose our basic manufacturing competencies, we will have lost a huge part of what has made the country strong. Those competencies will be very difficult to reclaim. We may well become a second-tier nation, reliant on other countries to build and supply us with much of what we should be building ourselves.

Worse, we now appear to be outsourcing those technologies that have made our leadership in the information age possible.

Nor are we growing the engineers and scientists necessary to take us into the future. A Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a Goddard, a Boeing, a Rockwell, a Microsoft, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a California Institute of Technology -- no matter how great they may be -- are insufficient to guarantee this country’s economic future.

Lewis Redding

Arcadia

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The Big Three automakers are in the same position as other institutions and individuals who gorged during the good times without planning for the bad. Instead of broadly researching and investing in vehicles that rely on renewable energy, as Toyota and Honda did, the Big Three cut off their noses to spite their faces to make a few quick bucks.

Like homeowners who traded up on inflated equity, or banks that made a killing on credit default swaps, the Big Three now have to pay for their shortsightedness.

Although I truly do feel sorry for those in the workforce who will lose jobs, how can I not feel resentment as a taxpayer who once again will be left holding the bailout bag?

Deborah Lopez

Agoura Hills