Let it burn!

As anyone who reads my blog may have noticed, I'm not exactly overzealous when it comes to the Republican Party. But I titled my blog Bickering Bipartisan because as Chris Rock says, I'm liberal about some things, and I'm conservative about some things.

For example, I am against most government bailouts, specifically the bailout of the auto industry, and anti-bailout was synonymous with the Republican Party. At least until we had so many bailouts that bailout fatigue sat in with the rest of the country.

I understand the argument that millions of jobs nationwide depend on the auto industry directly and indirectly. But let's look at the numbers. GM has a total debt of approximately 47 billion dollars. Their market capitalization, or what the company's value was, is 30 billion. This was when the economy was good. As of this moment, the company's worth is 1.25 billion and the government has pumped more than 13 billion into it.

Anyway you look at it, the numbers don't add up.

One thing the government tries to do is spare people pain by kicking
the can down the road. Such as the case with social security. Such
as the case with Medicare. But like a patient avoiding going to the
doctor to get that nagging pain checked out until dealing with the
problem becomes unavoidable, by the time you go to the doctor, you
have stage 4 cancer and you wish you would have went sooner.

I know there would be pain if these companies collapse. Employees
losing jobs, companies going out of business. But it also will
be painful for our future generations to be saddled with massive
debt and high tax rates when paying back these loans that provided
no benefit whatsoever. And judging by GM coming back recently and asking for additional assistance, I would say it's the case that our dollars haven't helped the company avoid collapsing. It looks to have only postponed the inevitable.


Don't get me wrong, I dislike pain. But pain is a good thing. When you were a kid and you felt pain, it taught you what not to do. If you touched a hot stove, I bet you learned real quick not to do it again! Therefore, I say bring on the pain.

Let's get it over with.

Give me my nasty dose of medicine so I can get on the road to recovery.

I feel the United States losing the auto industry would be a terrible thing. But I have no qualms about seeing the auto industry in it's current incarnation go the way of the dinosaur.

The auto companies have learned from the pain. If they could go back, they would do things much different than they have up to this point. If they were to collapse, smarter, more agile auto companies would rise from the ashes....

if only the government would allow Detroit to burn.