Okay, I can kind of see where the bank bailout was reasonable. Banks are, after all, federally insured, so the government has somewhat of a responsibility to assure the solvency of those institutions. I DO believe that the executives who contributed to the failure of said institutions need to be held accountable for their reckless spending and poor leadership--especially those bozos who celebrated their bailout with a $440,000 spa trip.
But a bailout of auto makers? Puh-leeze. GM has been operating at a significant loss for at least five years, Ford for at least three. They have already received the tax breaks associated with that.
Umm... Hello? Taxpayers should bail out these companies why?
I understand that there are tens of thousands of regular people employed by these companies, who will very likely lose their jobs in a time that is already financially challenging. And that is certainly something to take into consideration.
How about this for a solution: Every single person at GM, Ford, and Chrysler who makes more than $100,000 a year should sell off ALL their assets. The houses, the boats, the luxury cars, the timeshares, the hulking flatscreens. They should accept a salary of $60,000 a year, buy one small house (less than 2000 square feet) with no pool, two compact cars with cloth seats and no DVD players or satellite radio, and one 25" low-def television. Keep one iPhone ('cause we all need a little luxury), but nix the $40/month internet service fee for it. The combined difference from all those executives would certainly take a huge bite out of that $34 billion shortfall, and perhaps show those hoo-ha's what it's like to get by on a regular guy's salary.
*deep, cleansing breath* Okay. I feel better. I'm going to go back to ignoring the whole situation.
I am thankful that I drive a Toyota :-), that we don't work for the auto industry, and that people keep flushing stuff labeled 'flushable', thus assuring that plumbers have plenty of work to do.
2 comments:
I'm glad you wrote about this. It's driving me crazy! And you know why? Because all these auto makers are short on cash, and yes, a whole lot of people are going to lose jobs, but if they had just laid off some people years ago, they wouldn't be in this problem.
Did you know that because of the industry union intervention, when jobs have been eliminated over the past 20+ years, unionized employees are not laid off, but rather put into a jobs bank program, where they get paid a full salary to sit around and wait for a job in the industry to open up? According to the articles I've read, some people have been in the program for 15 or more years! I've seen news footage of these jobs bank offices where they have to show up every day to get paid--foosball tables, pool tables, vending machines, satellite TV, board games, poker games...it's a joke.
Only when they were called on the carpet today by the congressional committee did the union decide to suspend this program (notice they're not eliminating it) for the duration. The auto industry has been trying to eliminate this program for years, but the unions had them tied up in knots.
It's ridiculous.
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