More Bailout Blues
Will Wilkinson is right on the money pointing out the self-righteousness of the proposed bailout of the Big Three American auto companies.
If employees of the Big Three deserve to have taxpayers pay part of their relatively lavish salaries, then employees at thousands of failing business deserved the same. They had no chance of getting it, though, simply because they don’t have the right history with Washington. There is no other reason.
The argument in favor of the bank bailout was to prevent the whole economy from collapsing. While I personally find that argument less and less convincing, I suppose it can be made with a straight face. At the very least, without banks and finance, we have no economy and I suppose we go back to trading goats and chickens on the street. But manufacturing comes and goes and this is precisely how a working free economy functions. If the choice were between propping up a failing company and giving government help to those who may lose their jobs, I'd vote for against supporting failure every time.
If employees of the Big Three deserve to have taxpayers pay part of their relatively lavish salaries, then employees at thousands of failing business deserved the same. They had no chance of getting it, though, simply because they don’t have the right history with Washington. There is no other reason.
The argument in favor of the bank bailout was to prevent the whole economy from collapsing. While I personally find that argument less and less convincing, I suppose it can be made with a straight face. At the very least, without banks and finance, we have no economy and I suppose we go back to trading goats and chickens on the street. But manufacturing comes and goes and this is precisely how a working free economy functions. If the choice were between propping up a failing company and giving government help to those who may lose their jobs, I'd vote for against supporting failure every time.
posted by lonely libertarian at 4:22 PM
1 Comments:
Average compensation at the big 3 is $73.20 per hour...53% higher than at Toyota plants in America, 54% more than management and professional workers, 132% more than the average manufacturing wage, and 157% more than the average compensation of all American workers.
And the democrats believe that if we bail them out, we can fix their woes by telling them what kind of cars to make...as if congress could manage the companies better than management could. If you bail them out, you better destroy the UAW in the process, otherwise there is no point. They are not competitive and won't ever be when you are paying your manufacturing workforce (assumedly a homogenous group, equally talented to those at Toyota) 50-130% more than the market pays these people.
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