Obama Motors

[Trample the Elderly]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Well, the corporate bail out was a separate issue entirely. That was our government doing what any government would have done in the same situation. The taxpayers don't have an immediate voice in a representative democracy, so they are the easiest target to fleece, as you say.

The bailout, in my opinion, was neither good nor bad. It was stealing from Peter to give to Paul. Taxpayers were screwed either way. But by intervening, the bureaucrats could save their own careers, so the choice was easy.

Had they not bailed out Chrystler or GM the public would've paid nothing. They still had the option of filling bankruptcy to restructure. Delta did that and they're still flying. Our government shouldn't be acting like any other government. If everyone jumped off a bridge would you do it too?

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Trample the Elderly

Had they not bailed out Chrystler or GM the public would've paid nothing. They still had the option of filling bankruptcy to restructure. Delta did that and they're still flying. Our government shouldn't be acting like any other government. If everyone jumped off a bridge would you do it too?

Delta didn't have to worry about losing a majority of it's market share to foreign competition. In that case, a bailout would have been overkill.

If they hadn't bailed out GM, the loss of labor in the auto industries and the industries that were dependent on the auto industry in the form of unemployment taxes. Taxpayers would have been screwed anyway. Right now, there isn't sufficient economic growth in other industries to offset the exponential loss of jobs. Maybe in another place, another time, it would have been beneficial to force the auto industries to head into a more traditional bankruptcy process, but considering that demand for automobiles isn't going anywhere in the immediate future, we'd just be directly killing our GDP by not doing so. So, yeah, maybe the actual path we are going to take isn't much better, but it's certainly not worse, at least in the short term.

Where this has the potential to be worse is if the temporary economic stimulus solutions become permanent (think New Deal). But that's a different issue entirely. And even though Obama's plans seem to take that into effect, it's probably going to be up to his successor to actually see that part through. The long term effects of this bail-out are likely not in his control.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Delta didn't have to worry about losing a majority of it's market share to foreign competition. In that case, a bailout would have been overkill.

If they hadn't bailed out GM, the loss of labor in the auto industries and the industries that were dependent on the auto industry in the form of unemployment taxes. Taxpayers would have been screwed anyway. Right now, there isn't sufficient economic growth in other industries to offset the exponential loss of jobs. Maybe in another place, another time, it would have been beneficial to force the auto industries to head into a more traditional bankruptcy process, but considering that demand for automobiles isn't going anywhere in the immediate future, we'd just be directly killing our GDP by not doing so. So, yeah, maybe the actual path we are going to take isn't much better, but it's certainly not worse, at least in the short term.

Where this has the potential to be worse is if the temporary economic stimulus solutions become permanent (think New Deal). But that's a different issue entirely. And even though Obama's plans seem to take that into effect, it's probably going to be up to his successor to actually see that part through. The long term effects of this bail-out are likely not in his control.

The problem is even with all this bail out money there is no guarantee any of this will work. We have dumped 20 billion into GM and are going to now dump another 30 billion and if that does not work they will dump even more money into GM. I'm guessing within a year we are going to dump another 20 to 30 billion more into GM over the 50 billion.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The problem is even with all this bail out money there is no guarantee any of this will work. We have dumped 20 billion into GM and are going to now dump another 30 billion and if that does not work they will dump even more money into GM. I'm guessing within a year we are going to dump another 20 to 30 billion more into GM over the 50 billion.

Well, when GM spends that money, it's not going to be burned in a fire. The money that they are spending is revenue to somebody, and most likely, that somebody will be a private entity. So, the contributions of the taxpayers aren't going to be in vain in the way you are suggesting. All that's happening is that the current state of the economy is forcing you to reinvest some of what you would otherwise consider discretionary income into our economic system in the name of stability. Wheter via a bailout increasing taxes, or an increase in the unemployment tax seems like semantics to me.

We're a society that is interdependent on each other to an extent. A scenario where a major part of society could just fall out and everyone else is unaffected just isn't feasible. From an economic standpoint, the bailout doesn't guarentee the success of GM per se, but unless the capital ends up being sucked up into the pockets of shareholders, it's guarenteed to benefit the overall economy in some way.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Well, when GM spends that money, it's not going to be burned in a fire. The money that they are spending is revenue to somebody, and most likely, that somebody will be a private entity. So, the contributions of the taxpayers aren't going to be in vain in the way you are suggesting. All that's happening is that the current state of the economy is forcing you to reinvest some of what you would otherwise consider discretionary income into our economic system in the name of stability. Wheter via a bailout increasing taxes, or an increase in the unemployment tax seems like semantics to me.

We're a society that is interdependent on each other to an extent. A scenario where a major part of society could just fall out and everyone else is unaffected just isn't feasible. From an economic standpoint, the bailout doesn't guarentee the success of GM per se, but unless the capital ends up being sucked up into the pockets of shareholders, it's guarenteed to benefit the overall economy in some way.

If your did not hear I believe that GM no longer has share holders. The problem I see is we have allready dumped 20 bil into GM with no results so now we are going to dump another 30 bil into a long shot to see if that works. I'm guess that 30 bil will turn into another 50 bil. I don't think the impact of GM going under would be 80 bil in unemployment benifits.

[Trample the Elderly]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Delta didn't have to worry about losing a majority of it's market share to foreign competition. In that case, a bailout would have been overkill.

If they hadn't bailed out GM, the loss of labor in the auto industries and the industries that were dependent on the auto industry in the form of unemployment taxes. Taxpayers would have been screwed anyway. Right now, there isn't sufficient economic growth in other industries to offset the exponential loss of jobs. Maybe in another place, another time, it would have been beneficial to force the auto industries to head into a more traditional bankruptcy process, but considering that demand for automobiles isn't going anywhere in the immediate future, we'd just be directly killing our GDP by not doing so. So, yeah, maybe the actual path we are going to take isn't much better, but it's certainly not worse, at least in the short term.

Where this has the potential to be worse is if the temporary economic stimulus solutions become permanent (think New Deal). But that's a different issue entirely. And even though Obama's plans seem to take that into effect, it's probably going to be up to his successor to actually see that part through. The long term effects of this bail-out are likely not in his control.

Your arguement would make sense if American jobs were being saved when in fact GM is shipping jobs over-seas. The plant in Fredericksburg is being closed or so I've heard. So they're jobs are not beign saved? I say a picture of Detroit in a magazine. It doesn't look to me like the government did a really good job of saving people's jobs there, neither did GM. So why throw bad money after good?

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by Trample the Elderly

Your arguement would make sense if American jobs were being saved when in fact GM is shipping jobs over-seas. The plant in Fredericksburg is being closed or so I've heard. So they're jobs are not beign saved? I say a picture of Detroit in a magazine. It doesn't look to me like the government did a really good job of saving people's jobs there, neither did GM. So why throw bad money after good?

They're shipping those jobs overseas, and then still going bankrupt even after doing that.

Those jobs were a sunk cost, a cost encurred by absurd management over the past 10 years. The question is how many jobs NOT YET lost can be saved. That's what the government funding is designed to accomplish.

No sense crying over spilled milk.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Trample the Elderly

Your arguement would make sense if American jobs were being saved when in fact GM is shipping jobs over-seas. The plant in Fredericksburg is being closed or so I've heard. So they're jobs are not beign saved? I say a picture of Detroit in a magazine. It doesn't look to me like the government did a really good job of saving people's jobs there, neither did GM. So why throw bad money after good?

Well, the foreign companies employ American labor as well, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable for our GDP if GM and Chrystler stop producing automobiles and their market share gets spread around to Ford, Toyota, VW, etc.

If the economic response to failure of the american auto industry were a systematic movement in demand from the automotive industry to mass transportation, this would be an entirely different argument. Unfortunately, it just means people would go get their personal automobiles from a different manufacturer, and that certainly means fewer american jobs available.

GM absolutely can compete with the foreign automakers, they've just lost the batter over the last 30 years or so. I worry that maybe the entire industry may not be worth much in the long run, but that doesn't mean things won't improve in the near term future.

[Miller101]

Originally Posted by Trample the Elderly

Had they not bailed out Chrystler or GM the public would've paid nothing. They still had the option of filling bankruptcy to restructure. Delta did that and they're still flying. Our government shouldn't be acting like any other government. If everyone jumped off a bridge would you do it too?

Just for the record, the government did bail out the airlines. In the week following 9/11 some airlines lost ALOT of money and the government stepped in and hooked them up. I don't know if the airlines ever paid them back or not. With the way Bush ran things they probably didn't.

The government bailed out everyone. The only company that the left behind was the porn industry! Can you believe that? They bail out all the rich pricks, but they leave our porn stars alone to die.........................Geez, what is our country coming too!