Let's do less!(General Motors Corp) (General Motors reduce its capacity) (Editorial)

• Author: Rundles, Jeff

AS EVERYONE HAS BEEN EXPECTING FOR SOME TIME, the industrial giant General Motors made an announcement in November that it would restructure. When I heard it, I realized GM was changing the course of American business history. In all my days as a business reporter and observer of the business world, I have never seen more of a defeatist attitude.

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner announced that the company would close 12 North American manufacturing facilities, shed 30,000 workers and reduce its capacity to make automobiles by 1 million cars a year. He blamed the cuts on many things, but mostly on the high cost of health care for its workers, pensions and health care for its former workers, and on the fact that his competition, the Japanese, faced no similar burden.

I was just dumbfounded. The history of American business and, indeed, America, it seems to me, goes back more than 200 years with the attitude of "What more can we do?" But what we are being left with in the 21st century is "How can we do less?"

Since it has been nearly axiomatic now for many decades that "what is good for General Motors is good for the nation," we should all be examining what is going on with old GM. Wagoner made no mention of making better cars. He offered not one word about regaining competitiveness.

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No, the road to salvation for GM isn't thinking bigger, he said, it is rather in doing less. That just sounds like defeat to me.

GM's market share in North America has fallen over the last 40 or so years from 51 percent to 26 percent, and it is about to be taken over by Toyota in sales. Yes, it's true that GM is saddled with more North American history than its Japanese competitors, and yes, it has higher health care costs and other financial baggage that makes it less competitive.

But the truth is that Toyota builds better cars, and if GM had been making and selling Corollas and Celicas we wouldn't be having this discussion.

And it's not just the American automobile business.

To meet the ever-narrowing expectations of Wall Street, just about every business and industry in America has decided to do less. I think of my own industry, publishing and journalism. In November, yet again, the nation's newspapers announced circulation declines, a trend that has been going on for more than 40 years.

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Industry leaders blame the losses on the Internet, which, of course, wouldn't explain how the declines started 40 years ago, but...