As a country we do not encourage long-term, least cost, end use, holistic thinking that is more cost effective. We tend to think and act short-term, which have higher costs and less benefits.

Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org) state (book: "Factor Four"), if you want to double your profit, double your efficiency. To double efficiency takes a motivated, educated work force that has continuing education available. The book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" points this out in simple terms, but as a whole, we do not pay attention.

Double your efficiency?
GM and their ilk have been very efficiently sucking the teat of a very corpulent government subsidy system, the center of a corporate welfare state. If you gave the Factor Four advice to them, they'd be busy saying "well, we could be more efficient at lobbying..."

Seriously, the american car companies need to feel PAIN before they will change, and with the current administration's policy of "shrinking the govt until it can be drowned in a bathtub" policies + massive overspending, they'll be more likely to bail out the automakers repeatedly, to the automakers' detriment.

Expect utter chaos before anything good happens... and pray it's not too late (and we don't become something like the UK where all the native brands are owned by foriegn companies and used to sell "rebranded" foreign cars)