so the detroit welfare queens have ripped us off – again. basically, our overlords have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that those who live within the imaginary lines they have drawn on a map and called the “united states” should be forced to pay to prop up these awful companies. the effect is five-fold (at least):
1) these companies can’t build products good enough to sell to us voluntarily, so our money has to be ripped away from us and handed over to them. it’s a give-us-your money-or-we’ll-take-it-by-force situation.
2) the money is removed from productive society and given to companies that have proven themselves to be failures, so we throw good money after bad.
3) we’re stuck with crappy car companies, whether we like it or not, for the foreseeable future.
4) because the companies are being nationalized, we can expect the quality to get even worse, at greater expense.
5) the opportunity cost. who knows what companies could have risen up to take the place of these automotive sloths? if the old dead giants would just die already, there’s no telling what younger, hungrier companies could do with the assets they got from gm and chrysler at pennies on the dollar.
of course, the federal government is broke to the tune of 75+ trillion dollars of debt and unfunded liabilities, so where is this money going to come from? well, the magic money inflation machine, of course! they’re just going to print it, like good little keynesians. since there is no difference between productive and unproductive spending, the gummint can just spend us out of this recession and since printing money is the same as creating real wealth, they can simply print their way to paradise, the likes of which zimbabwe has never seen! that’s sarcasm, in case some of you may have missed it.
but hey, what’s a little more economic destruction when the fate of politically connected companies are lining up at the trough? i, for one will never buy an american car (at least not a gm or chrysler) as long as i live. that kind of sucks, because the new zr1 corvettes are awesome. but there’s no way in hell someone is going to beg the state to rob me for their private benefit and expect me to continue doing business with them. they robbed us! let ’em burn! that’s actually what i would have recommended even if the bailout had not happened, since it’s a healthy process in an economy.
so, everyone do your patriotic (whatever that means) duty and “Buy (anything but) American!”