Auto Bailout

A recent USA Today poll shows that only 25% of Americans support an auto industry bailout. Put another way (actually the exact same but I feel it's more forceful): 75% of Americans Don't want their tax dollars going to the auto industry. If that's the case then why are our representatives in Washington still considering ANOTHER bailout? GM is expected to post record losses again, somewhere around 8 billion for Q4. (UPDATE: GM just reported losses for 2008, get ready for this...at 30.9 billion!) Apparently the original 15 billion we gave them a couple months ago wasn't enough. GM and Chrysler are in Washington (again) asking for more money. They decided to leave the private jets at home (good decision guys!). These guys live such a hard life...They use the threat of bankruptcy and the loss of more jobs to try to coerce our representatives into giving them additional funds. I believe they are missing the big picture. The only way for the auto industry to achieve a sustainable business plan is for them to file for bankruptcy. Yes, I'm talking about the big bad "B" word. It's the only way for them to break the unions. The same unions that would rather see an entire industry fail instead of renegotiating contracts to make them competitive with the rest of the world. If the contracts don't change we will be stuck in a vicious cycle of a bailout followed by a bailout followed by another trip to Washington and then another bailout. I call it a bailout, they call it a loan. Either way, I pay taxes and then those tax dollars are given to a failing industry. Think about it, it's not very complex. If i have to pay 10 dollars to make something and you only have to pay 8 dollars and we each have identical products then who has the competitive advantage? Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner and it's not the US!

So why don't the people in Washington do what I thought they were supposed to do and represent the people who elected them. It's funny that they are called "representatives" but so often they do no representing.

Let's guarantee the warranties of American made cars and get the auto industries into some sort of structured bankruptcy. Let's crush the auto unions and make our auto industry competitive with the rest of the world. And, in the end if they still aren't competitive then we should let them fail. Our country has prospered with competitive capitalism. It's not always the prettiest or nicest way to run a society but it seems to have worked better than the others. Winston Churchill put it brilliantly, "Capitalism is surely the worst economic system, except for all the others that have been tried."