GM didn't go bankrupt because Obama didn't do anything, GM went backrupt because of bad management and the extremely high cost of operating such a business in the USA (esp. of labor costs). Government regulations concerning their products didn't help either. Obama DID waste BILLIONS before they went bankrupt anyway, though. Let's give him credit for that complete waste of the money we earned.

If Obama hadn't wasted that money GM would have already done what it is doing now and would be months ahead of the game without wasting billions of our dollars in the meantime.

I know he spent quite some money in it. I merely wanted to point out that Obama (or any other president) can't do anything right in an economic crisis, or: "the grass is always greener on the other side"-effect..
Basicly, the economic crisis is something we have to sit through, the only thing a government can do is trying to make that not too much jobs get lost.

I disagree WFS. The government can ALSO spend vast sums of money which it does not have in order to invest in damaging our country years, decades, and in this case even generations down the line even after the initial crisis has passed.

Obama could do a lot of things right. Just because Obama isn't doing them doesn't mean his critics are criticizing his actions regardless of what they are. Obama is increasing spending, debt, and taxation. These things are harmful to any and every economy.

> Little Paul wrote:

> "The American people voted, its called "DEMOCRACY". If you don't like the end result,
move to North Korea."
zarf, its the other way around. Here you can disagree with any policy to a certain extend. Ok, I know you were joking right.

Never said the US was a dictatorship.  My argument was very simple: When the issue is one of whether or not certain individuals should obtain an increase in wealth given directly from the government, whether through direct funding or through favorable legislation, without requesting a change in that individual's actions, you should take it with a grain of salt when someone calls the process that caused it "democracy."  That same system is the one voters complain about when legislators vote to give themselves pay raises.  In cases like this, the system would be better called "tyranny by majority." 

Tear a page from Mitt Romney's "reform" of health care

Mandate everybody lease a GM vehicle or pay fines

Damn I hate the GOP this century

Ps if you didn't know

Mitt Romney as Republican governor of Massachusetts had everybody buy insurance or pay fines

By setting a mandatory cost on breathing free without insurance they made insurance companies seem fun and worth it

This destruction of liberty in the name of "voluntary" submission to bureaucrat's vision of your lifestyle is coyly known as "market-based incentives"

Its called that when politicians do it

When private citizens do it, its Black Hand extortion tactics

Conservatives wanted AIG to fail, and Chrysler and GM to solve their own messes without govt spending a dime

We pay to feed unemployed people.  For a time.

and that's it.

if Chrysler and GM goes, then the car parts companies, Borg Warner, Visteon, ect goes because they just lost most of their business. and when the Car parts companies goes, then Ford goes, and all car manufacturing from foreign companies that is inside the US goes because all car manufacturing in the US relies heavily on American car part companies.

i agree, it does justify stupid actions on the part of businesses, but then again, everyone i've talked to about cars in real life has no intention of buying a chrysler or gm, and if the government bailed coke out, i bet they would loose a ton of customers too, i think the civilians are making them pay for their actions. my neighbor bought Chrysler his entire life, if he needed a car atm, he would buy a Ford.

theres also the fact that the overhead for a auto-make is much much more immense then a soda company. for pepsi to replace a supplier or two is much cheaper then Ford replacing their auto suppliers, especially considering Ford would most likely have to go out of country while theres many companies inside the US that could provide parts for a soda company.

and then the shareholders have lost considerable money, and everyone near the top in both chrysler and GM have been fired, everyone responsable for their past failures has suffered, there is no encouragement for other companies to try do the same.

"If that's the case... then even assuming they don't go bankrupt with a bailout, the industries are no longer contributing to society"

no, because all the people i have talked to isnt a scientific sample of the population, the fact that will alienate a large amount of the customer base, does not mean they will alienate all of them, just means their capacity to earn the owner's money will be limited.

If they can't earn their shareholders money in which case they likely aren't consistently profitable then there's no point keeping them around. If the other car part companies can only make money by selling to a unprofitable company propped up by the taxpayer then the same goes for them too.

Having them out of the equation would free up alot of labour resources to go do something else that could be profitable or just go work for one of the  Japanese car companies with a locally based manufactory.

@ Little Paul

I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you are saying, but there is one mistake you make: a democracy is not a check on government, a democracy implies that the government IS the people, either in its representative form or its direct form. Institutional checks come from our belief in a mixed government and mixed constitution. The executive is an unelected structure and so is the supreme court.

And what I meant by my comment was simple, in its representative form America's current government doesn't represent its constituents and represents the whole  of the 'people' i.e. the working class even less. However, there is a demographic that is overly represented in politics and that is the bourgeois/capitalist class.

> avogadro wrote:

> "If that's the case... then even assuming they don't go bankrupt with a bailout, the industries are no longer contributing to society"

no, because all the people i have talked to isnt a scientific sample of the population, the fact that will alienate a large amount of the customer base, does not mean they will alienate all of them, just means their capacity to earn the owner's money will be limited.

Now I don't know what the hell you're saying the significance of this backlash will be, because you've backtracked on your stance.  "Oh, I talked to a bunch of people and they hate GM," then "Oh, don't believe what I said.  Sure, I talked to a few people, but not nearly enough for it to matter!"

If there is a significant public backlash against bailout companies, then they aren't an integrated part of the business community because they wouldn't be selling enough cars to where the supplier companies are making a profit anyway.

If there is no public backlash, then there is no penalty for businesses.

Remember, for your backlash to even matter, it has to be relatively similar in size to the bailout's size.  Otherwise, it is still net beneficial for the business to suck it up, take the loss of customers, and go for the bailout.

And one more thing: How many cars do you think Chrysler and GM would be making in the future?  Since car sales have dropped, there is a huge backlog of '08 cars for sale.  Supply and demand says those cars will drop to rock bottom prices (which has very much begun to occur.  For example, GM is closing a bunch of car dealerships in my neighborhood, and those dealerships are basically accepting whatever offer they possibly can).  Whether or not the government bails out the companies, the oversupply of old cars will mean a loss of demand for new cars for a long time, which means the companies are unsustainable.