American protecting its turf

[tw]

Not only is Southwest Airlines cheaper. The company is also profitable. Since United, American, and Delta use MBA 'economies of scale' and other business school concepts; those airlines are losing money like sinking ships. Of course. How many executives even work as stewardesses - first learn how the work gets done. According to business school philosophy, such knowledge is not necessary. Those executives study spread sheets and read reports.

Other industries have the same anti-American attitude. Big steel got a mental midget president to put up illegal tarrifs - that only cost 20,000 to 40,000 productive Americans their jobs. Meanwhile, those big steel executives took pay increases as they continued to stifle innovation.

We have GM whose products (Cheverolet, Buick, Pontiac, Saturn, GMC, etc) are some of the world's worst with costs higher than Mercedes Benz, et al. They too will blame the unions, pension plans, unfair foreign competition, tax structures, etc all for problems like 'two extra pistons in every engine', inferior suspensions, poor gas mileage from 1968 technology engines, etc. Even with $100 million from the government to design a hybrid - 11 years later GM still would have no hybrid engine. Meanwhile GM promotes hydrogen as a fuel that even fundamental science says is not reasonable. But don't worry. GM's top executives have something better than Geico car insurance - golden parachutes and pay packages of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The same administration that refused to prosecute corporate corruption - refusing to even accept money from Congress to investigate corporate corruption. From these same people comes more corporate welfare. Today's Philadelphia Inquirer demonstrates how you punish and suppress the innovative so that big industry (and nearly bankrupt) companies run by MBAs will be protected.

American protecting its turf
For the traveler who needs a ticket today to fly between Philadelphia and Dallas tomorrow, the round-trip fare on American Airlines or US Airways could be as high as $1,100. But to make a next-day trip to Houston - a route of similar length served by Southwest Airlines - the cost would be $588.

That price difference - and what it could mean in revenue to American - helps explain why American is lobbying hard in Congress to keep a law that prohibits Southwest from offering its signature low-fare flights from Dallas to Philadelphia and other cities.

... American [Airlines] is lobbying hard in Congress to keep a law that prohibits Southwest from offering its signature low-fare flights from Dallas to Philadelphia and other cities.

The Wright Amendment, named for former House Speaker Jim Wright, a Democrat from Fort Worth, was adopted to help the then-fledgling Dallas-Fort Worth airport grow.

How to protect your jobs? Demand that government remove protections that protect only the anti-innovative rich. Best that could happen to air carriers is to have the big boys bankrupted - so that their MBA managers are replaced OR so that innovative carriers such as Southwest can expand profitably at will. One small problem. That is the free market which means no reason to buy politicians.

Screw Southwest Airlines. We have a recession to create. The upcoming recession appears to be right on schedule - starting with the president's tax cut, his insistence that we consume more energy, and of course that no one expected the levees to be breached. What's a few more laws to protect anti-innovative and MBA bloated (and Texas based) American Airlines.