...But Do I Get a Free Car?

I own GM now, apparently. I must say I feel wealthy along with my 32 million other shareholders who have just purchased 12% of a car company to the tune of $10 billion. Now, this seems great until I realized that I don't get a dividend for my stocks. In fact I don't get anything except an inevitable paycheque decrease thanks to the future taxes I'll have to pay for this colossal blunder. Steven Harper is pulling the "following orders" excuse as to why the government bailed out General Motors. According to the PM, they would not have done it had Obama not bailed out the US arm of the company, and it was only done to keep jobs in Canada. Fair enough but I cannot help but wonder whether it's just delaying the inevitable. All throughout the bailout negotiations, GM management and the CAW/UAW have taken an apathetic stance on restructuring. The CAW still considers being docked down to the same level of every other worker, blue or white collar, to be a major concession.

Now that two of the largest companies in the world have been nationalized, what's in it for the rest of us who are forking out this money? One leading bankruptcy lawyer noted that Chrysler will be unable to repay its loans to the government. What makes General Motors any different? It's simply putting good money after bad. GM has put a great deal of funding into the Camaro and the Volt, two cars which will supposedly save the company. Unfortunately, pony cars and hybrids aren't selling and the company has grown a reputation for having unreliable vehicles. GM's plan for profitability is relying on niche products, which may work for smaller companies or those in strong financial shape, but it's not viable in the long run. If this recession has done anything, it has shown that Keynesian economics, or rather the distorted version being used today, simply no longer works in modern economies. It's important to keep banks stable and inject cash into infrastructure projects to create jobs but Keynes to my knowledge never said anything about bailing out the failures of others. However, that seems to be the government policy de jour. The problem is that all political parties seem to be supporting this yet Canadians and Americans alike are not liking it one bit. The Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP have all been pushing for bailouts. Sure it keeps people working but at what cost? If GM collapses again in the near future, which to me seems inevitable, we'll be out double rather than just letting them fail now and worrying about EI. We've lived to survive another day but at what cost? We now risk governments micromanaging the economy and getting more bloated than ever before. Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan must be turning in their graves.

Steven Harper has failed on this issue but would Michael Ignatiff had done anything different, or Jack Layton? Already government deficit is ballooning out of control, both at the national level and in Liberal controlled Ontario. The United States is in no better shape. The two North American powers desperately need to return to the Reganomics model. While Canadians have criticized such models for cutting services and cutting back the "saintly" civil service, they worked; something that cannot be said for the hypergovernment models of today. Governments are simply getting far too big and too intrusive for their own good. We've been down this path before, and have always emerged worse off than when we went in. If we must suffer this, at the vary least I should get a free car; seeing as how I paid for it. I'll take a Corvette please, in black if possible.