Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

1) I have consistently pointed out on this thread that if there was a market for the Chevy Volt -- it provided people with something they want at a good price -- it would succeed. The fact that that hasn't been the case doesn't mean I was rooting against anything. I was annoyed that it became government policy to try to force something on a market that clearly doesn't want it -- even when it is so heavily subsidized. I weighed the opportunity cost of that. When we subsidize something the way this car has been subsidized, it comes at the expense of something else. We'll never know exactly what that opportunity cost was and how much it has hurt our overall economy.

2) As for "rooting" against GM, I hated how the GM bankruptcy was subverted by our government to pick winners and losers. And I hated that the company was given preference that 99.99 percent of the rest of us aren't given -- our Federal government shouldn't be adding to our out-of-control debt load by giving out billions of dollars worth of favors to one business at a time that lots of other businesses were failing and didn't get the same favor. It created winners and losers as a matter of political preference. And again, we'll never know the opportunity cost and how much those resources being diverted for GM's benefits hurt our overall economy by not allowing that capital to find a more competitive use.

3) Now that we have eaten the loss and we are out of GM? Why should I "root" for OR against it -- given that I choose not to have any stake in the company? I am not a GM owner. If GM can create cars and other products that are competitive, I WANT it to be able to compete fairly. If it can't, it shouldn't, and the auto market should be left to automakers that produce cars that people actually want to buy. When I say that, it doesn't mean I am "rooting" against GM. I just have no reason to root for or against it. I have no stake in GM. I don't WANT any stake in GM.

 

I didn't think you were referring to me. I had long ago let this thread go. When GM sold less Volts in 2013 than 2012, I didn't bother reviving it.

But when someone revived it again and you posted that, it struck me the same way that other posts did earlier in the thread. Maybe you don't feel this way -- but others seemed to have; that I should be "rooting" for GM. And if I am not, I am "rooting" against GM.

If I came close to capturing what you think with that, it makes no sense to me. I have no stake in GM. And if GM is a failure, and we divert capital to it to keep it around because we people believe we should be rooting for it. ... it *hurts* all of us.

As for the defense department wasting oodles of money, it has nothing to do with this thread. Start that thread and I can certainly weigh in to agree with you, if the point is that we are in over our heads in debt and we have a bureaucracy like that wasting money with no incentive not to. But I can't imagine I will post very much if you, and others on this thread who have disagreed with me, are just in agreement.

Of course, that has nothing to do with this thread.

 

Maybe.

I know I could post on a thread like that easily without turning it into a stupid and mindless Yankees vs Red Sox my political party vs. your political party poo-slinging fest that gets personal and threatens to spill onto other threads.

If others couldn't, yeah, I imagine that thread wouldn't last very long.

 

We were talking about GM. Which was why I was posting about GM, and not other companies that were given subsidized at all of our expense -- when they should have gone bye bye. I was happy to post on those threads when we had them. They never really lasted the way this one has, though, because there was less disagreement.

The bailouts to AIG and Bear Stearns were destructive -- and corrupt, too -- for the same reasons.

How come whenever I have posted about GM (on a thread about GM), though. ... I get the knee-jerk pivot to defense spending or about AIG (at least related)? Will you jump on board and say that our government should not be injecting itself in private economic economic activity -- whether it is GM or AIG -- and putting us in debt to hand out favors to hand-picked entities (with the rest of us not getting that same corrupt preference that gives us a freebie at everyone else's expense)?