I’m confused and possibly a little cynical. Why do we (the taxpayers) have to be a part of the $25 billion bailouts for the big 3 (Ford, GM, and Chrysler). I know… it’s coming from that $ 700 billion infusion that has been promised for the financial sector, but come on! Am I to believe that these organizations will use this money as a bridge loan so that they can restructure, re-engineer or/and re-tool in order to become more competitive? Maybe I’m just too simple-minded, but, shouldn’t they have figured that piece out years ago when Toyota and Honda were kicking their butt? Didn’t they know that the Taurus and the Escort didn’t compare to the Accords and the Accura’s? They certainly didn’t have the cool factor going for them. Matter-of-fact, I can’t think of one time where I heard someone say that they were planning to buy a Taurus. However, I did see plenty of them as company cars, and that makes me think that maybe that’s how they stayed in the game :-)….leasing to other fortune 500 companies because they sure didn’t sell any cars to my friends or neighbors. I know I know …what about SUVs? I hear yeah! Unfortunately, that’s what they banked their revenues on over the last couple of years, and they actually had a good run at it. So I’m confused! I’m confused about the fact that they can essentially say “spot me $25 billion I’m good for it”.
The flip side is that GM has about 120,000 U.S employees. Ford has about 80,000 and Chrysler has about 66,000. In addition, the three automakers have about 14,000 U.S dealerships between them which employ another 740,000 workers. The suppliers employ about 610,000 people. You add that up and you have more than 1.6 million jobs tied to the auto industry. There are a lot of lives tied to the success of the auto industry here in the U.S. Think about the peripheral lives/jobs of the advertisers, media companies, local retail stores, etc, and you have a serious economic impact. Needless to say, this is in addition to what we are experiencing today.
One side of me asks, “Whatever happened to free-market competition? Whatever happened to making a better product to compete with? One side of me says. “Let the market take its course”. The other side softens towards the additional impact will have on our country.
Just a thought! Since Mr. Paulson is fighting to throw additional taxpayers money ($700 billion) toward the problems these companies got themselves into. He might as well throw a billion or two at our inner-city schools that have been faced with this sort of problem for years. At a minimum, I think that the ROI from our youth would be greater than that of this continuing process of artificially creating a market for products that has a self-proclaimed competitive balance. At least I could continue along the path of hope for our future by knowing that our youth are being prepared to take the mantle, and continue our global competitive nature.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Why should we bailout the big 3 U.S Automobile companies?
I’m confused and possibly a little cynical. Why do we (the taxpayers) have to be a part of the $25 billion bailouts for the big 3 (Ford, GM, and Chrysler). I know… it’s coming from that $ 700 billion infusion that has been promised for the financial sector, but come on! Am I to believe that these organizations will use this money as a bridge loan so that they can restructure, re-engineer or/and re-tool in order to become more competitive? Maybe I’m just too simple-minded, but, shouldn’t they have figured that piece out years ago when Toyota and Honda were kicking their butt? Didn’t they know that the Taurus and the Escort didn’t compare to the Accords and the Accura’s? They certainly didn’t have the cool factor going for them. Matter-of-fact, I can’t think of one time where I heard someone say that they were planning to buy a Taurus. However, I did see plenty of them as company cars, and that makes me think that maybe that’s how they stayed in the game :-)….leasing to other fortune 500 companies because they sure didn’t sell any cars to my friends or neighbors. I know I know …what about SUVs? I hear yeah! Unfortunately, that’s what they banked their revenues on over the last couple of years, and they actually had a good run at it. So I’m confused! I’m confused about the fact that they can essentially say “spot me $25 billion I’m good for it”.
The flip side is that GM has about 120,000 U.S employees. Ford has about 80,000 and Chrysler has about 66,000. In addition, the three automakers have about 14,000 U.S dealerships between them which employ another 740,000 workers. The suppliers employ about 610,000 people. You add that up and you have more than 1.6 million jobs tied to the auto industry. There are a lot of lives tied to the success of the auto industry here in the U.S. Think about the peripheral lives/jobs of the advertisers, media companies, local retail stores, etc, and you have a serious economic impact. Needless to say, this is in addition to what we are experiencing today.
One side of me asks, “Whatever happened to free-market competition? Whatever happened to making a better product to compete with? One side of me says. “Let the market take its course”. The other side softens towards the additional impact will have on our country.
Just a thought! Since Mr. Paulson is fighting to throw additional taxpayers money ($700 billion) toward the problems these companies got themselves into. He might as well throw a billion or two at our inner-city schools that have been faced with this sort of problem for years. At a minimum, I think that the ROI from our youth would be greater than that of this continuing process of artificially creating a market for products that has a self-proclaimed competitive balance. At least I could continue along the path of hope for our future by knowing that our youth are being prepared to take the mantle, and continue our global competitive nature.
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