Part of the agreement the US government has forged with the General Motors corporation after it accepted billions of dollars worth of bailout money involves compliance with the direction ordered by the council established to deal with GM's economic collapse. President Obama has stated that the US government is not taking control of the Detroit automaker. However, the sphere of his influence became more evident last week when GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner stepped down from his post after the White House rejected GM's recovery plans for the use of government money. The intimate relationship forming between the federal government and one of America's biggest corporations has spurred heated debate over the extent of control a government should have in a supposedly free market economy. Opponents of the Obama recovery plan and bailout have called it socialist in nature and raise unwarranted frenzy about the threat of big government.
The truth is the market doing its best to kill industries that don't respond to consumer demand. Detroit has put out a lot of shitty cars in the past twenty years. It has reissued models without making any significant improvements, and it over produced SUV's with no rational consideration for the direction of the market and the evolution of motor vehicle transportation. Eight years ago when I started driving a 4-cylinder Mazda Protege, I was terrified of being run over by one of those gas guzzling giants. Even then I knew that that was not the future of automobiles and I was only 16. What Obama is trying to do is save the thousands of jobs and people that weren't making the decisions that ran these companies into the ground.
I don't think the government should be a controlling factor in any industry, but the motivations behind the Obama plan make sense on other levels. Unfortunately it's hard to put a price on the overall social good produced. What I fear is that after all this work and money it will be too little too late, and the people at the top of the ladder than ran these companies into the ground will get out just fine. I guess only time will tell.
Tamasha (2015)
10 years ago
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1 comments:
Although I don't think the government should have should have much/any control when it comes to the economy, I like you logic! Saving the livelihoods of employees isn't what bothers me; it's bailing out the top guys that don't need any more money to fund their excessive lifestyles that have come to represent America as a greedy and dishonest nation.
By the way, this is Angela (from DOK). I also have a blog, though it is much more...stereotypical and girly, I guess, though I hate to admit it(recipes? fashion? crafts?? YES!) I just switched from blogspot to wordpress though, and the going is slow, so there's no way I'm giving out the url yet!!
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