Comments | smatterings: To bail out or not to bail out?

smatterings

To bail out or not to bail out?

Dec 18, 2008 14:11

The Question: Bailout or no bailout?

Postulate 1: It's not auto sales that's the problem
I heard a quote the other day from senator Tom Coburn, one of the Republicans filibustering the auto bailout plan:
"In 2007, GM sold 9.37 million cars worldwide. Toyota, that same year, sold 9.37 million cars worldwide. GM lost 38.7 billion. Toyota made 17.7 ( Read more... )

politics, longwindedness

Comments 5

miladyelizabeth December 18 2008, 22:34:32 UTC

Wow, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, they obviously need to cut costs. On the other hand, workers need insurance and benefits. Blargh.

ladyviola5 December 19 2008, 05:05:44 UTC

Workers at the foreign plants get benefits as well, and often good ones. The main difference? The big three American plants are almost all in the midwest. The new foreign plants? Alabama and Tennessee. Cost of living is WAY cheaper in the south. Also, when you consider how much of your paycheck goes to the union with the big three, it ends up being not much difference between the two ( ... )

mrbri December 19 2008, 18:30:36 UTC

It looks like the bailout just happened.
I don't get it. I'm not purely a believer in "Corporate Darwinism". As a matter of fact, I thought I made that word up. I just Googled it and I discovered that I did not.
Anywho. Where was the gov'ment when the American TV makers all went out of business? Oh yeah, other companies made better quality TVs for less money.
I see no point in the bailout. Take the 17 billion and give half of it to Tesla motors. Give the rest to Honda and Toyota and tell them to use the factories and employees of our failed greedy corporations and make cars people want. If they don't like the factories we have now, they can wait until October, at which time they will be burned to the ground in Detroit's annual rite-of-passage.
Then they can be re-located to the likes of Pelion and Aynor.

Interesting post boktheinternal December 20 2008, 15:10:58 UTC

I've thought about this a bit myself. Some comments on each postulate follow ( ... )

boktheinternal December 20 2008, 15:15:27 UTC

Postulate 2 and 3:

Frankly, I think this and postulate 3 are the main issues. Sadly, I think this will also be remembered as a text-book case against unions in a capitalistic market-driven society. Unions are basically a form of socialism. With capitalism running more and more rampant in the world, this particular approach is probably not the most practical. Now, if in fact, it's really things OTHER than the union and sales, but merely issues of mismanagement and bad choices in supply chain... well, the unions will still get shit for it.

From a big picture point of view, with the banks, auto manufacturers, and DRAM manufacturers all really feeling the hurt, massive amounts of people around the world losing their jobs while many of the ultra-rich still stay rich... I can't help but wonder if humanity starts re-evaluating the way the markets work, and perhaps get forced into re-evaluating how to curtail greed and/or address the side-effects of rampant un-checked capitalism ( ... )