Stop the General Motors Bailout
November 12, 2008
by William P. Meyers

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Some members of Congress appear to be getting ready to bailout General Motors, aka GM. This would be bad for America. Allowing GM to go out of business would be a very good thing. And it GM is to stay in business, the money should come from its shareholders, not the taxpayers.

The pimps in Congress who want money for GM, and the corporate press, will be careful not to remind you of all the dividends that were drained out of GM over the last century. If even the dividends paid out in the last ten years had been kept and used to create a cash reserve, or invested in producing small, energy-efficient cars, GM would be fine right now.

How about sucking the dividends back in? Have GM send to its stockholders notices saying that if they don't send back the dividends, GM will go under. See what happens.

Think of the enourmous benefits America will see if GM goes under. Ford and Chrysler have plenty of capacity to supply U.S. consumers with cars. In addition, when GM goes under, everything it owns will go for sale under the bankruptcy court. Maybe a foreign car manufacturer, Tata or Toyota or Fiat, that has more competent management will buy the whole thing. Maybe some parts of it will go here, some parts there. Maybe GM will be broken up into four or five smaller American-owned companies that are better managed, nimbler, and capable of operating in the 21st century.

So why is  the Democratic Party leadership so keen on giving your taxes to a bunch of old corporate capitalist types. They will say it is jobs. That is their sales pitch. But the same money could create a lot more jobs if put into any industry other than auto manufacturing.

To be efficient, robots have to be used to run modern automobile factories. So there are two choices for your taxpayer dollars: recreating an inefficient GM with human jobs, or creating an efficient, competitive GM with robots replacing workers.

Let us just face up to the fact that when push comes to shove, the Democratic Party uses taxpayer dollars to do its campaign donors bidding. Between the United Auto Workers, the GM bosses, and hedge fund managers, Barack Obama and other Democratic Party officials were flooded with money this campaign cycle. Those donors want to be repaid. Job creation is just one Democratic Party standard marketing tool. I am not against job creation, but I know when it is a sales pitch instead of the real deal.

GM purposefully made and promoted miles-per-gallon, expensive SUVs that they knew were killing the planet (see Global Warming) and impoverishing consumers. They were happy to make us dependent on foreign oil and lobbied for drilling for oil in ecologically sensitive areas of the United States.

If GM's management deserve anything from the government, it is the gallows.

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