PDA

View Full Version : Government Motors Is Alive And Detroit Is Dead



Chris
07-22-2013, 10:08 PM
OK, well, I just kind of like the headline is all.

The rest is just standard rightwingnutjobextremist stuff...


The fundamental transformation of Detroit is complete, as socialism's theme park succumbs to government run amok, a reminder that government isn't the solution to our problems but their cause.

The wisdom of President Reagan's words have been lost under an administration that believes government is the entity from which all blessings flow. So has Margaret Thatcher's observation that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Last Oct. 13, President Obama boasted in a weekly address about the bailed-out auto industry that, "We refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. I bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later that bet is paying off in a big way."

Less than a year later, the American auto industry is indeed surviving, bolstered largely by a Ford that refused government assistance and foreign transplants located in right-to-work states. Even General Motors has been forced to pay the free market some lip service, lest its customers go elsewhere, even as it accepts Chevy Volt subsidies.

Detroit, however, is dead, and unions and government killed it....

@ Government Motors Is Alive And Detroit Is Dead (http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071913-664483-detroit-bankruptcy-caused-by-unions-government.htm#ixzz2Zpn5H3vQ)

Mainecoons
07-22-2013, 10:51 PM
Not so fast on Government Motors.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2012/08/15/general-motors-is-headed-for-bankruptcy-again/

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/obamas-gm-success-story-headed-for-bankruptcy/


A report (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/06/auto-bailout-or-uaw-bailout-taxpayer-losses-came-from-subsidizing-union-compensation) by the Heritage Foundation paints a devastating picture of how politicized the bailout of GM truly was. Heritage notes that even if one accepts president Obama’s premise that the bailout out GM was necessary to prevent massive job losses, “the government could have executed the bailout with no net cost to taxpayers. It could have–had the Administration required the United Auto Workers (UAW) to accept standard bankruptcy concessions instead of granting the union preferential treatment. The extra UAW subsidies cost $26.5 billion–more than the entire foreign aid budget in 2011. The Administration did not need to lose money to keep GM and Chrysler operating. The Detroit auto bailout was, in fact, a UAW bailout.” (Note that the subsidies are higher than the total loss currently attributed to the auto-maker.)The preferential treatment had two primary components. Despite the fact that the UAW had the same legal status as other unsecured creditors, they recovered a much greater proportion of the debts GM and Chrysler owed the union. And even though bankruptcy typically brings uncompetitive wages down to market levels, UAW members took no pay cuts.In short, the UAW an Obama administration picked both the “winner” in the deal–the UAW–and the “loser,” aka the American taxpayer.

Chris
07-22-2013, 11:03 PM
Government shouldn't pick winners and losers, least of all when the people it's supposed to protect end up loser on the short end of the stick.