Quote:
Originally Posted by garagelogic
So why should I, I being the U.S. taxpayer, want to make the loan to GM if the risk is so high that people in the business of loaning money are unwilling/too smart to do so?
Let the damn company(s) fail and we will all be better off in the long run.
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Start counting to a million right now. Every time you say a number, I want you to say a name out of the phone book. When you're done, you will have said somewhere around 20% of the people who have been affected. If you talk like an auctioneer, you'll be done in a few days. That's millions of lives forever changed. There aren't millions of jobs in management, automotive industries, factories, or other comparable work for these folks to work.
After that, consider all of the money the companies, dealers, and suppliers pay in taxes. Tens to hundreds of billions will disappear. You just counted to a million, so multiply that time by a factor of 10 and then that number by a factor of 100. Can you even imagine the good our country has been doing us with that money that will disappear? We're talking about educational funding, financial aid, food stamps, subsidies, roads, national defense and investments. Can you imagine losing one of those? Let's have a country without food stamps for the 5 million people that won't find a job for the next 8 years.
Losing that much of the population's employment status will cause enormous problems for other industries as well. Soon, you'll see companies that make uniforms for auto employees go under; you'll see clothing retailers go out of business for lack of sales; you'll see grocery stores collapse because all people can afford are ramen noodles.
These are bad times. Without the auto industry—yes, they are all tied together, so try losing just one of them—we are all screwed. We're looking at something far worse than the Great Depression if we fail to stop the collapse of major domestic industries. We're looking at an end to American influence overseas. We're looking at a reactionary twist in history that would make America more agrarian than it is industrial. We're looking at the country we know not being a country at all. Is that what you want? Fine—let's abandon our auto companies. 5 million lives will change immediately, and everyone else's will change thereafter. Is that really what you want?