Thread: Go economy!
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Old 2008-11-20, 06:01 PM   #187
sperry
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kunikos View Post
Not flying on a private jet for one day is hardly going to save the company from the brink of failure. It costs, what, $2,500 to operate the jet for one trip in comparison with the $25 billion they need? The mock outrage over this is is really just a political red herring. You think that congressmen don't fly around in private jets all the time?

The real outrage should be over bailing out yet another company without bailing out the shareholders, all while claiming that America is about free market capitalism. Let's all either stop giving that phrase lip service and stop giving hand-outs to inept companies who will fail regardless, or let's go whole-hog socialist and make the Detroit 3 into nationalized auto-makers.
Red herring or not, if you're going to ask the taxpayers to save your ass, you ought to do a better PR job, which includes looking like you're doing everything you can to save money, even if it's not going to make any real difference in the outcome.

That said, the auto industry (and the banking industry for that matter) deserve to fail. Especially in the auto industry, the writing was on the wall... did they really think that people would continue to pay $50,000 for $15,000 trucks with leather seats? Even if there weren't the gas or environmental crises, none of the US manufacturers had anything in the pipeline simply for when the public got tired of SUVs.
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