Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Jeez. Maybe you are not familiar with the chronology. Tesla sold a couple of thousand of that roadster since 2003 -- it was a performance car that came with a $100,000 + price tag on it and was sold all over the world. Most of those sales were not U.S. sales, they were European and Asian sales, and they went to rich people who wanted to add another limited-edition ridiculously priced car to their collection.

That roadster was not subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. What is being subsidized by us, is a car called the Model S sedan (still ridiculously priced at $57,000), but not being marketed as a limited-edition high-performance sports car for European playboys. On the back of that design, our government which is handing out bags of money to try to develop this market segment, gave Tesla a $465 million loan to build a factory. Tesla then hit the equity markets and raised $220 in funding.

With that money, Tesla has made all kinds of promises. As a public company it has to report its results. And they keep making promises, but showing results that are pathetic. What we found out from their 3rd quarter SEC filing is that they delivered less than 200 of those Model S sedans (all I care about, because it is ALL I am being forced to subsdize). They are burning through all that money -- the guaranteed loan at American taxpayer expense, and the money in the equity markets that loan allowed them to raise -- and they can't even make interest payments on the loan they owe our Federal government.

But they are still promising great things to come. Even as there are still only 200 of those cars on the road to show for that $465 billion in taxpayer money that we all need to fret about now.

That money is as good as gone. And yes, if it wasn't a Federal loan and a political nightmare for those who gave that money to admit that they gave it to people who were incompetent at best, and more likely fraudulent at worst, the SEC would be crawling all over that company right now -- assuming the SEC was doing what it says it does, which it is usually incapable of.

Telling me they have produced 2,000 electric cars since 2003 is useless. They weren't a mainstream car, and they weren't being funded by the U.S. government. And in fact, the vast majority of even that paltry number of vehicles are sitting in Europe and Asia, not the U.S. I'm talking about the Tesla Motors that our government decided to throw cash at to make sedans. And what we have gotten for that money.

What I just typed is factual, tell me where it isn't please.

 

Latest figures as of 2011, of course, because 2012 is still a work in progress. All of those countries are in heavy debt. Why would they take issue with the truth?

Norway: Their debt grew to 49.61 percent of their GDP (despite the fact that they sit pretty due to oil reserve money compared to must European countries).
Sweden: Their debt is 37.44 percent of their GDP.
Denmark: Debt is 46.43 of GDP.
Germany: Debt is 81.51 of GDP.
Finland: Debt is 48.56 of GDP.

What is more, 2012 has been so bad economically for the Eurozone that there isn't a country among them that isn't running a budget deficit (Sweden comes closest. In 2011, they effectively ran a balanced budget. In 2012, given the economic slowdown, they are not going to be able to), which means that if I come back a year from now and point out their debt levels, they will have grown -- not just as a percentage of GDP (obviously their economies aren't growing much, so the number is going to worsen significantly) but in real Euro terms.

 

By the way, you cherry-picked part of my post. The point was that when Az pointed to the taxes on gas prices in most of Europe, which make gas cost significantly more than in the U.S., he said that those taxes pay for good public transportation systems. The part of my post you cut out was pointing out that Europe isn't paying for things purely with tax revenues. Those countries are ALL in debt. As with the U.S., and as with just about every country in the world, government services have NOT been made available for years on a pay-as-you-go basis (tax revenues matching spending), but by piling up debt to make good on the political promises because the will to tax at the levels necessary to give everything that is promised would have people rioting in the streets.

That is true in all of the countries you mentioned. They all are in debt.