Think of General Motors as the metaphor of the Keynesian economy in one company — massive simultaneous spending on unsustainable capital investment and unsustainable consumer consumption. Or as Bloomberg reporters Doron Levin and John Helyar describe it, “burning the furniture in order to stay warm.”
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/9095/gm-burning-the-furniture-in-order-to-stay-warm/
GM — “burning the furniture in order to stay warm”
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Looks like Mr. Swanson beat you to it, Mr. Ransom.
[sarcasm] Quick, start destroying all the cars on the streets to raise the price of cars!!! [/sarcasm]
I’ve got a program that might work. Government coerces you and others so that I can to trade in my old GM for a new one every year! What’s not to like? I get a new car every year (OK, maybe it is the one that the government thinks I should have but that’s a small sacrifice). GM stays in business. Except for a small, politically insignificant portion of society, government is pretty good at extracting property from people as painlessly as possible.
But even doing all that wasn’t enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren’t opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they’re opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn’t given back enough, but because the UAW hadn’t given up.
http://michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php
Is that the same thing as “painting your porch when your house is on fire”??
Walter Frantz without prejudice: Is that the same thing as “painting your porch when your house is on fire”??
A more apt phrase would be:
“It’s like putting gas into a car you’ve already wrecked.”
MM
…they weren’t opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they’re opposed to workers making a decent wage.
Certainly Republican politicians are just as execrable as Democrat politicians. In this case, I believe the Republicans opposed the bailouts because their constituents making $25 per hour did not want to lower their standard of living to save the jobs of UAW members making $75 per hour.
Don’t be too upset MM. I am sure once they are properly bought off the Republicans will come around and the bailout will proceed as planned.
As an aside, promoting the bailouts has pushed Bush into the number 4 position on my list of all time worst Presidents. Who would have thought he could have passed Nixon and LBJ? In order to crack the top 3 spots he would have had to involve the country in a major war. Sorry, it’s not for lack of trying, but Iraq just doesn’t cut it.
Lowell Sherris said: As an aside, promoting the bailouts has pushed Bush into the number 4 position on my list of all time worst Presidents. Who would have thought he could have passed Nixon and LBJ? In order to crack the top 3 spots he would have had to involve the country in a major war. Sorry, it’s not for lack of trying, but Iraq just doesn’t cut it.
I know I’m going off topic for this blog post, but I have to say I completely disagree with your statement.
Iraq does cut it. As does Afganistan. They ARE major wars. And even if they weren’t, they never were for self defense and are therefore a criminal action. There is no excuse for the US attacking and invading countries that did not attack it first. Besides, the US was attacked by terrorists, people of no country.
This pointless war costs more than the Vietnam War or the Korean War (which were also pointless wars.)
Between Iraq and Afghanistan, an estimated 700,000 people have died and 1,300,000 have been seriously injured.
It’s a major war and a total tragedy. I have trouble seeing how anyone could deny that.
Takamura
I certainly don’t mean to minimize the present wars. Certainly, it is a nightmare for the individuals involved. However, for the purpose of ranking Presidential evil, the present wars are minor league. Of course we cannot now see the long term effects, so this ranking of presidents is an ongoing process.
The three major wars I mentioned are the Civil War, WWI and WWII. The long term effects of these wars were devastating to the U.S. The Civil war essentially destroyed federalism. WWI led to the horrors of Nazi Germany. WWII
allowed the Soviet Union to expand its influence over most of the world. Each of these wars changed the character of America and its government for the worse.
I will be horrified if the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts lead to even worse consequences. Furthermore, Bush is now finished. Obama has the ability to end these wars the day he begins office. Any further evil that arises from these conflicts will be on his head.
Getting back on subject…. like mm, I feel bad for GM’s workers, but subsidizing $75/hr jobs while most other Americans continue to lose ground economically is just not politically sustainable. The U.S. railroad industry went thru this same exact thing in the 1970′s and 80′s from unbelievable featherbedding and awful, defeatist managements. (anybody ever hear of Penn Central?) Now railroads are back stronger than they have been in 50 or more years, and almost all railroaders make good money. (and, at least GM’s workers only have to compete with $45/hr fellow americans or equally highly paid – or more – japanese or europeans, and not slave wage chinese workers.
J Cortez : “[sarcasm] Quick, start destroying all the cars on the streets to raise the price of cars!!! [/sarcasm]”
That would be the “French youth riot solution” or FYRS for short. ; )
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