Guess this shows that I am a philosopher. I truly can't get my head around governments thinking that it is sensible policy to throw good money after huge amounts of bad money (aka the 'big three', GM, Ford and Chrysler). These companies have spent decades building insane cars - an example is shown above. Their quality sucks big time, their fuel economy is a joke, yet for some bizarre reason more likely to do with national pride than anything else, they keep getting propped up by our tax monies. To readers outside Northamerica ... these dinosaurs masquerading as cars are really everywhere. The question surely arises whether we as taxpayers should at least be adding conditions to such madness? Like: you get our billions only if you meet certain standards of fuel efficiency, the utilization of recycled materials, etc? Surely the argument from jobs can't be sufficient to justify burning billions of $$. It probably would be cheaper at this stage to simply pay these people their salaries without asking them to build cars that nobody sane could possibly want to buy to begin with! Actually, here's my suggestion: add the GM, Chrysler, and Ford workers to the government payroll and require them not to produce any further cars. Use the saved money to develop industries aimed at generating efficient public transport systems. Welcome to the 21st century.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Tough luck GM, Ford and Chrysler
Guess this shows that I am a philosopher. I truly can't get my head around governments thinking that it is sensible policy to throw good money after huge amounts of bad money (aka the 'big three', GM, Ford and Chrysler). These companies have spent decades building insane cars - an example is shown above. Their quality sucks big time, their fuel economy is a joke, yet for some bizarre reason more likely to do with national pride than anything else, they keep getting propped up by our tax monies. To readers outside Northamerica ... these dinosaurs masquerading as cars are really everywhere. The question surely arises whether we as taxpayers should at least be adding conditions to such madness? Like: you get our billions only if you meet certain standards of fuel efficiency, the utilization of recycled materials, etc? Surely the argument from jobs can't be sufficient to justify burning billions of $$. It probably would be cheaper at this stage to simply pay these people their salaries without asking them to build cars that nobody sane could possibly want to buy to begin with! Actually, here's my suggestion: add the GM, Chrysler, and Ford workers to the government payroll and require them not to produce any further cars. Use the saved money to develop industries aimed at generating efficient public transport systems. Welcome to the 21st century.
