It's May 13, 2024, 12:17:32 AM
A totally separate issue is whether an elected representative, in a democratic country, should be able to intervene in the economy on behalf of the public. Whether or not Obama is actually doing what is in the public interest in this particular case is an open question. However, I do not see how a person who believes in democracy- forget "socialism" -can doubt, in principle, the legitimacy of an elected representative intervening in the economy on behalf of the public, when ,say, destructive trends need to be mitigated.
The American tax payers are now a huge (major?) shareholder of GM. Obama, being the tax payers representative, now has the power to fire the CEO.And it's not the size of the cars that led GM to fail, it's because GM makes shitty cars.
Quote from: I TO DA GEEZY on April 02, 2009, 08:51:27 AMA totally separate issue is whether an elected representative, in a democratic country, should be able to intervene in the economy on behalf of the public. Whether or not Obama is actually doing what is in the public interest in this particular case is an open question. However, I do not see how a person who believes in democracy- forget "socialism" -can doubt, in principle, the legitimacy of an elected representative intervening in the economy on behalf of the public, when ,say, destructive trends need to be mitigated.Because America is a Republic not a democracy. Also, according to the constitution, an individual has the rights to ownership of what he produces, NOT the government. Therefore, the owner of GM bares the responsibility of his businesses success or failure, and Barack Obama has no rights to infringe upon a private corporation, niether for it's benefit nor for it's detriment. The founding fathers were totally against this sort of thing....By the way I-Geezy, you are a well-known socialist like your God Noam Chomsky, so you falsely imagine a "good and righteous" (which has never really existed for any long-term period) government that can supposedly make the economy do what it's supposed to do (which is also impossible because one can not control the market).
I did not suggest government should intervene to benefit the corporation, in fact I'm very much opposed to the idea (though this is the standard form of government intervention, against which you don't speak much).
Public representatives in democratic societies should only intervene on behalf of the public. If the government doesn't serve the public it should be revoked.
Now, I very much agree that individuals should have the right to own what they produce, note, "individuals", not collectivist private tyrannies (or corporations).
GM was/is on the verge of bankruptcy, and GM is just too damn big to fail. The alternative would have cost us millions of jobs. As the son of a UAW (United Auto Workers) union leader, I follow the auto industry closely. From the time FDR had GM close their car productions to make room for tank production, to now, the auto industry has been on the verge of socialism. The 70's saw the invasion of Japanese cars, and the 80's saw GM and Ford try to milk profits by making shitty cars so that people buy cars more often. Instead, by the mid-90's, GM was fucked over when people wised up and then went to foreign cars. Ford managed to recover, reintroduce the Mustang and rebuild itself as an American Icon. GM however went big, Chevy was making Hummers, going large with SUV's, which worked until gas prices shot through the roof. Just recently, they changed their model to more compact, fuel effectuate cars, one which an Impala gets 30mpg instead of my '03 Impala which gets 23mpg. GM was starting to change, but no one is willing to invest in GM. They have screwed themselves of 20-30 years of bad business. If you think GM is bad, Chrysler is even worst. My dad, a buy an American junkie said after working on Chrysler, he'd never buy a Chrysler (though he did buy my sister a PT Cruiser... ha ha ha), and many people would agree with them.Bottomline though, we can not let either company fail, because people like my father, and many other fathers across this country, were/are employed by GM, and that is millions of jobs lost. We cannot have that happen, not now. In all honestly, GM deserves to fail, it deserves all it would get, but with millions of blue collar jobs on the line, we need to step in and get them in the right foot. I don't agree with firing the CEO, but it was more symbolic than anything. No one else was fired, and the same team is still there. It was a message, get your act right and lets do what we have to do.
my view would be if the government has to step in to prop up a company financially, it has already failed and bailing it out not only prolongs the inevitable but takes away the incentive and capital from being used effectively in the meanwhile. regardless of the amount of jobs lost, it is far more damaging to the economy long term to try and keep failed enterprises afloat.with the case of banks it is straight up robbery of the tax payer when funds are used to shore up bad balance sheets. although car companies have plenty of bad debt to their names, they do continue to produce a tangible product (whether banks choose to continue lending is debatable) and this side of it is problematic when you get into government beauracrats making management decisions where they should have no say whatsoever. i could be wrong, but GM may need even more money and fail in the future regardless of whether it is propped up as a zombie-company in the short-term. time will tell...
Quote from: M Dogg on April 02, 2009, 10:04:48 AMGM was/is on the verge of bankruptcy, and GM is just too damn big to fail. The alternative would have cost us millions of jobs. As the son of a UAW (United Auto Workers) union leader, I follow the auto industry closely. From the time FDR had GM close their car productions to make room for tank production, to now, the auto industry has been on the verge of socialism. The 70's saw the invasion of Japanese cars, and the 80's saw GM and Ford try to milk profits by making shitty cars so that people buy cars more often. Instead, by the mid-90's, GM was fucked over when people wised up and then went to foreign cars. Ford managed to recover, reintroduce the Mustang and rebuild itself as an American Icon. GM however went big, Chevy was making Hummers, going large with SUV's, which worked until gas prices shot through the roof. Just recently, they changed their model to more compact, fuel effectuate cars, one which an Impala gets 30mpg instead of my '03 Impala which gets 23mpg. GM was starting to change, but no one is willing to invest in GM. They have screwed themselves of 20-30 years of bad business. If you think GM is bad, Chrysler is even worst. My dad, a buy an American junkie said after working on Chrysler, he'd never buy a Chrysler (though he did buy my sister a PT Cruiser... ha ha ha), and many people would agree with them.Bottomline though, we can not let either company fail, because people like my father, and many other fathers across this country, were/are employed by GM, and that is millions of jobs lost. We cannot have that happen, not now. In all honestly, GM deserves to fail, it deserves all it would get, but with millions of blue collar jobs on the line, we need to step in and get them in the right foot. I don't agree with firing the CEO, but it was more symbolic than anything. No one else was fired, and the same team is still there. It was a message, get your act right and lets do what we have to do. Your commiting a most common error when it comes to analyzing the economy; and that is to focus upon what is seen and not what is unseen. You are only focused upon the people at GM losing their jobs. But what you neglect to see, is that this government bailout will be expensive upon the American public at large, and therefore, it will cause everybody to have less money either through inflation or taxation; therefore, instead of one business failing, 100's of businesses will fail because people will have less money to spend on the things they truly want and desire. There standard of living will decrease because the government is now dictating to them where they should spend their money, rather than the individual making the decision as to what will benefit him most.