It is not with pleasure that I enter this blog today. It is with frustration on the one hand and thanks on the other. My family and I have not lived with an excess of financial success. We have lived rather frugally by most standards but have managed to find money for the things we really wanted to do. One of the main things that has allowed us the freedom to do many of the things we wanted to is our ability to find contentment in places other than those advertised on TV. We have never owned a new car and likely never will. Thankfully, my wife and I both feel like a car is to be a servant to our family, not our master. When I buy a car now, I expect it to run well over the 300,000 mile mark. If it doesn't make it I feel like I have failed to choose wisely and am disappointed. Additionally, I do most of the maintenance myself which has saved us untold thousands over the years. Unfortunately, this approach to car buying leaves us looking at Japanese-made vehicles, not American-made. A few years ago I purchased a Camry with over 200,000 miles on it, for an even thousand dollars and when we gave it away, (still running), it had over 300,000 miles on it. America should be producing the best everything as far as I'm concerned, but we're not. While GM was becoming a manufacturing-based health care provider the Japanese were working hard at developing processes to produce high quality cars. While we were demanding more and more pay for producing lower quality cars, they were taking personal pride in their workmanship. While I don't have specifics in front of me I believe that, by and large, union workers at GM were making more money with better benefits than the vast majority of the people who were buying their cars. I understand the challenges of manufacturing here in the US; many of those challenges are unavoidable. But the big paychecks and huge pension promises made by our biggest companies will see that we are held at a disadvantage for decades.
So this is my frustration. And here is my thanks. Thank you, Japan, for supplying my family and me with reliable and efficient transportation for the last 40 years.
