Ben Stein's articles are so bad...
December 09, 2008
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They turned off the comment function on his most recent article. So I'll give everyone the opportunity to comment on it here. Now of course I am part of the "Detroit should declare Chapter 11" crowd. As a former dissatisfied owner of a GM car, I really dont feel particularly sympathetic to their plight. They are an inefficient company that has reached the end of its business cycle. I rant more about my views on GM in my Market Rant. In the meantime, enjoy the article.
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/127875
Ben Stein How Not to Ruin Your Life
Bail Out Detroit – Now
by Ben Stein
Posted on Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 12:00AMUsually this column is about finance. It usually is an attempt to help the reader make money and have a more comfortable life. I am well aware that I have made a lot of mistakes and that in the short run many of my suggestions have turned out badly. Believe me, I am sorry. I still believe that in the long run the investment ideas will do well, but I am terribly sad that people's hopes have been disappointed in the short run.
My best guess is that we are in a panic of sellers and market manipulators and that we will recover within a few years, but I base this on history. We may have moved into a new phase where history is irrelevant. I would be surprised if that were so, since it's never been true before, but one never knows.
However, today, let's talk about the American auto companies. They need a bailout from us taxpayers, and they have to get it yesterday. Here's why
First, we are on thin ice economically. To allow our largest heavy industrial component to fail at this delicate moment is suicidal. To put a couple of million more Americans into unemployment is just not sensible. Mr. Barack Obama is talking about public works projects to employ hundreds of thousands of Americans -bridge building, school building, airport building. These projects take time to start, disrupt local community life, and are famously wasteful.
Why not be smart about it and NOT LET AMERICANS GET UNEMPLOYED IN THE FIRST PLACE? (Please pardon the shouting.) There are millions of Americans already hard at work making great American made cars and trucks. Why not keep them on the job? Wouldn't that be smarter than allowing the whole upper Midwest to fall into oblivion and then rescue it over a fifty year period?
Second, I get sick when I hear about how this or that professor says we cannot have bailouts in a free market. Really? How about the bailouts the professors get because gifts to colleges are tax free? How about the bailout they get because if they have to teach six hours a week they feel overwhelmed, while the guy on the line in Dearborn works a grueling forty and doesn't whine about it?
Somehow, we can give bailouts to investment banks where the top dogs make hundreds of millions a year for running the company into the ditch and wrecking the whole credit picture in America. Somehow we can have bailouts for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose bosses were trading on the credit of the taxpayers to make themselves rich while pumping up a serious housing bubble.
Amazingly, we can have whole fleets of C-130's fly to remote areas of Iraq and Afghanistan with pallets of hundred dollar bills piled from floor to ceiling. Then we can pass them out to warlords who make tea for our soldiers one hour and blow their guts out the next. We can send CIA operatives into Somalia and give millions, maybe hundreds of millions, to warlords to fight other killers.
But we cannot find it in our hearts to save our fellow Americans in Ohio and Michigan and Indiana who make the cars and trucks that about half of us buy? We can send billions to Germany and Japan to bail them out after they bombed us and killed our POWs and killed six million Jews. But we cannot help the children and grandchildren of the men and women who fought our war and made us the arsenal of democracy?
Something is very wrong here.
And please don't tell me how GM and Ford and Chrysler have made bad cars that people don't want. I drive only American cars, only GM cars actually, and they are the best, coolest cars I have ever driven: my 1962 Red Corvette, my mighty Cadillacs whose potent engines and super brakes have saved my life many times on the freeway. Yes, the cool people in DC and New York don't drive American cars. But a lot of other good people do and we love them. And my Cadillac dealer down here in the desert, Jessup Motors, gives me a lot better service than my Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Jaguar, or Acura dealers ever did. I would trust my life to Detroit iron any time.
And why are we so angry at the car companies' executives? They get miserable pay by Wall Street standards and have much harder jobs. Why are we so angry at the unions? They negotiated their deals in good faith. It's not their fault that roller coaster gasoline prices messed up their world. They are our brothers and sisters. They fight our wars. They maintain our middle class lives. Maybe they get paid a lot, but they have been giving back for years. When will it ever be enough? And what about the retirees? They get the benefits they were promised. If those can be taken away, then whose benefits are safe? And do you think it will be cheaper if the government takes on those costs directly?
Let's stop the Depression before it starts. Let's show some fairness and good faith to our own. Let's bail out the Big Three, help them slim down, shape up, and keep making great cars and trucks. The Big Three are us and if we cannot help ourselves, who can we help?
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