Help me. I really don’t get this one. Here’s the deal: auto-makers like, oh, say… GM, make big-inefficient-gas-guzzling-truck-cars. Their entire business model is built around selling such things. Their entire profit structure revolves around people’s gullibility to buy such things. Here are the lies: buy them because they’re safer, or handle better, or go through the snow better, or have roomier interiors or are more rugged. and on and on. Fact is they are none of those things. At least no more than any other normal cars. See this link for more.
So, now the large car market has sunk. People want smaller more efficient cars. But here it is 2008 and the big car makers still don’t know how to make them. So now they want the government — we the people — to pay for their incompetence.
I would never buy one of those useless truck cars… that’s just my thing. It is so wasteful to drive 7000 lbs or more of steel and plastic around to move one or two people from place to place. One wheel weighs more than I do! Now, through, my taxes via a government bailout, will be used to pay for everyone else’s SUVs.
One of the best comments I’ve heard about this is that we do not have a capitalist economy, we have a corporatist economy. Companies don’t want anyone or anything to touch them as they are earning profits, but as soon as they start hemorrhaging their cash, they want the government to step in. And in this case the government has no choice. They must support these huge companies because to lose them would be even more devastating. It certainly doesn’t sound like capitalism to me. It means these companies can make whatever crap they want and know that at the end of the day, they cannot fail. The government will always be there to bail them out. It certainly seems to encourage their inefficient ways. It makes the companies plan only for the short term, the quick profit, and it discourages long term thinking and sustainable business practices.
Capitalism on the way up. Socialism on the way down. That’s our economy.
Oh, and then I found this:
From Dilbert.com, Nov 8 2008
